mk zariel

after terri lynn davis's "Quadruple Sonnet To My AWP Lit Crush"

post-movement despair is different with you

i text him after giving a youth-liberation talk and

getting off-topic after ten minutes—you ask me

if i've radicalized you yet, and i reply that a

genderless negation can dream. i chose you because it was

the summer of '23 at the time and nothing seemed weird compared

to the ANews comments, which means you're normal and i'm loved

i look awkward in the mosh pit, that night you just stay in and read

like a boy after my heart. i film my friend's workshop like an embarrassing

aunt at a toddler's recital, you don't laugh at me, and i call that

character. that summer sounded like Against Me! and lively debates

that dissolve as quickly as light-grey midwestern rainfall

and i learn for the first time that theorists are normal people, except for you

and we discuss anarchonihilism in some random graveyard while trying

desperately to seem unpretentious, but still, i call you and launch into Swiftie-level dissection

of someone's analysis of Baedan, you don't make fun of me,

and that's how i know you're mine & yours & who have i become

and a year later i send you a zine about egoist anarchism

and you tell me you've outgrown me and it's the fall of '24 and everything

seems weird solely because we like it that way

ten of us gather at an undisclosed section of desire—we declare

that we're done with monumental organizing, but really we're just gay

and tired—except that you are assimilating—and tired—but still.

could we co-author an anonymous communique, so i get to watch you

try to sound like anyone but the neurotic angel boy

i fell for? have you read Renzo Novatore? you haven't? why are you done (with me)?

what the hell is wrong (with you)? do we need to start an affinity (group)?

have you read Terror Incognita? do you just ask because you're afraid of me

and feel too weird to admit it? here's my definition of negation: not

industrial sabotage or any of the classic stuff, but getting a text from you

and not responding, because maybe that's generative too.

This work is previously published in FSM. fmk.ink