MY FEVER IS BACK and I don’t know why! Lev is in the chair
chuckling at nothing—hand holding
a chalice so firm I can almost figure it
The ghost is the music I’m going to cry
So I never want to love again because I never stopped I hate looking at my phone
It’s always been buzzing right beneath me I hope
the resonance swallows my whole room and everything
inside. They say Nat! You seem so
far away I say I know and smile their eyes
have never been so browny-black toasted like a young animal feeling
for the stinging pink warmth of another. All I need
is human touch—my own—today my hands I love
the little gifts and echoes
of these—our own sounds and figures
best I could go on like this forever.

N. Naylor is a twenty-something bi-costal poet and writer who recently finished her BA in Literature in the northern hills of California. The themes of her work draw from a mosaic of her personal experiences; queerness, conceptions of the body, hometowns and relocation, and love in all manifestations of the word.