letter from the editor:

I think the most honest kind of love waltzes in without you even registering the shift, like one day you look up & realize your heart has wondered off and is 860 miles away & you just think oh.

the last girl who held those aforementioned chambers took them through forceful entry like scarlet could metamorphosize – a weapon in the right hands. I remember watching bojack horseman & hearing the line, “when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags,” & freezing as if the shade had found home in my hands. I blamed myself for her shortcomings, and sometimes we forgot who was even holding the gun in the first place. it felt like she wanted me to be a bad person in an effort to justify her shitty, borderline abusive behavior. or maybe she didn’t want to be alone; misery loves company, and what about violence? I wrote a chapbook centered around the relationship between villanelle and eve, paralleling it to our constant shortcomings and shootouts. I hate how I missed all of the flags – even the ones we waived in one hand as the other pulled the trigger.

but love cannot coexist with fear. love is not romanticizing the worst version of yourself. love is not a machine gun. love is not red. love is not creating frankenstein only to fall in love with her.

love is checking your zodiac before my own. love is tangled up in joint pinterest boards and spotify playlists. love transcends stateliness and logic and all of the reasons why it shouldn’t work.

love is not a robbery.

baby, you never stole my heart;

it ran to you all on its own.

Cover artist: Truth Ortiz

Content warning: depression, anxiety, violence, assault, and intrusive thoughts.

Page count: 44

robbers

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