Exaptation or, The Stars Dangle from Their Ear In my star charts I relabeled the sequence of the ecliptic to better articulate the calculus of Scorpio + Capricorn and render it into magic I understand, such works of Silurian & Cretaceous suns. You incise my earlobe + I’m nervous enough to babble of malleus & stapes, how we fit together articular + quadrate into a thrum of music & speech. A reptile couldn’t hear this, you whisper through teeth. Scale-skin couldn’t feel this, though your touch activates atavistic fur + the memory of burrowing together, away from the claws & monotonous teeth of reptiles outside. We just fit on your foam mattress, primate fingers curious of the pattern of star-wheels + cynodont fur.
& there was an island not far down the skidclay bank where we donned poison oak crowns mineral glamours of eyeshadow 2 years pent; too years leanfed hunger for joy, hunger for words so acute we wove our own language of swordfern and acorn doled freely to frog & firefly in pirate lust from rockbound pools old things shed & cast in bottles in tumbledown brick hideaways we dug & glittered & sank deep
Beeper Peddle is a writer and healer living on the East Coast. She lives with her partner and their beloved soul puppy. Beeper writes about sorrows, lies, and deep loves. When you read her work, you will dip down into her heart and end up in all manner of body parts. Should you find yourself reflected in these words, it is merely coincidence; however, it does not surprise her you share the same heart. Find her at bethpeddle.com and @beeperpeddle on Twitter and Instagram
Rick Hollon (they/them or fey/fem) is a nonbinary, intersex, bi/queer writer from the American Midwest. Feir work has appeared or is forthcoming in Delicate Friend, Sledgehammer Lit, Kaleidotrope, the HELL IS REAL anthology, and elsewhere.
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