Day Five: Capricorn Season

Laying in your bed
Phil collins loudly playing
This purple light you have turned on
To make it feel calmer
Does the opposite
You pass around the smallest bowl known to man
The bed isn’t really all that comfortable,
Or more accurately, it’s unmemorable.
She’s here, which is inexplicable.
She seems to be a friend of yours
It isn’t snowing but it just did
It’s midnight
You’re recording this thing,
She is contributing nothing.
Your bedroom is really warm
And you have a bidet,
Two new pieces of information

Change the color of the lights with a remote
Purple switches to a light green
You click away, putting on big headphones,
A professional
Seeing like you this is so new
Working so hard
Laughing in your
Space
Adjusting your light blue jeans
With your cock
Just slightly visible

Now she’s complaining
About people who use the word
Bitch
Who is going to tell her
About all the people dying in the world
Who is going to tell her
That her boyfriend would be annoyed that she
Is in his bedroom with us
Who is going to tell her
That i’m here to make you my boyfriend

You say you’re drunk after just one beer
How embarrassing
You have this whole set up
Foam padding
A professional mic
Software
Keyboards
You seem to know what you’re doing
At least, where music is concerned
Your taste in cis poets seems awful
Do you like that blonde poet just because
You want to fuck her?
If so
I’m exhausted
And I really should be getting home.
Have fun with her
And her overalls

Happy belated birthday
I’ll drunk text you soon.

Jo Barchi is a writer from Rhode Island. They currently live in Chicago where they work in an ice cream shop. They are an editor at Ghost City Press. Their work has appeared in Shabby Dollhouse, and elsewhere.

Day Four: Sagittarius Season

I’m on coke and I can’t stop
Masturbating
And by masturbating I mean not
Texting you back

And by not texting you back I mean
Not being texted back but really I am horny
I almost called you on my way home
But that wouldn’t do anything
I want it to I don’t want to scare you
I just want you to come back

Brown eyes
Dark hair
East coast
Bad taste in
Good kisser
Almost available
Nearly emotionally
Perfectly physically

Holding me in the kitchen
Making pasta
Watching me make pasta
Offering to help, standing to the side
Sitting on the floor
Before we got a kitchen table
the music
I put on
You love
Kissing to swedish post punk

Closing the door
For the chance
To kiss more
It was so cold
That week we
Spent together

Going to the art institute
To stare and laugh so much
I don’t feel bad about this
How you ghosted me
But I would like to apologize
For not eating for 11 hours
The course of
Our second date

Jo Barchi is a writer from Rhode Island. They currently live in Chicago where they work in an ice cream shop. They are an editor at Ghost City Press. Their work has appeared in Shabby Dollhouse, and elsewhere.

Day Three: Libra Season

First you fuck me against a door and then it’s in a bar bathroom and i’m drunk and I fall on the sidewalk and i’m laughing and you’re so angry with me. You shove a sprig of lavender up my pussy and take me from behind in a BP bathroom on Ashland. One fuck after another. You are tireless, ever since you found out you can make me cum twice in 10 minutes, once will never be enough. Your cum mixes with the lavender, it’s a spell or whatever. You fuck me in the dressing room of a nameless clothing store and i don’t cry afterwards or buy anything. You finger me in the back of an uberpool for five minutes but we are both too drunk and tired so you stop. I massage your back in the bath when you're on ecstasy and I think it might turn into fucking, but it never does. This is a dream. I haven’t let you fuck me yet. I’ll probably cry after the first time, and every other time after.

Jo Barchi is a writer from Rhode Island. They currently live in Chicago where they work in an ice cream shop. They are an editor at Ghost City Press. Their work has appeared in Shabby Dollhouse, and elsewhere.

Day Two: Virgo Season

Making you cum is a dream, it’s all I imagine, well, that and what it would be like to have you text me back. Is it still a fantasy if it’s simple, or am I too manic now to have fantasies? Instead of asking you any of this, i jerk off thinking about the time you called me on the phone outside some party and told me you were thinking about me.

What did it mean when you texted me at 11:10 PM on April 14th and said “Sometimes you just need to get ridden hard, you know dawgie.” Do you even remember that, or have you blocked it out, how I used to block it out. I would fuck you in your glass closet, if you would just ask.

I really shouldn’t keep convincing myself i’m in love with you, or even keep texting you, but I just moved here. I spend so much time laying shirtless on my cousin’s green leather couch, letting myself sweat until i’m stuck to the cushions. I don’t get up. I don’t start to touch myself. I just think about you loving me back, biting my neck.

Cleaning off my stomach, shutting off my phone, closing my laptop, trying to figure out what I can get done before I need to fall asleep, pretending you didn’t leave me on read for four days. Making endless to do lists. Finding a job. Finding a place to live. Cumming, twice a day, like clockwork. Tick tick tick tick tick tick, do you love me yet?

Jo Barchi is a writer from Rhode Island. They currently live in Chicago where they work in an ice cream shop. They are an editor at Ghost City Press. Their work has appeared in Shabby Dollhouse, and elsewhere.

Day One: Cancer Season

Obviously crying
Deciding to move halfway across the country
Since when does running away not work
Working midnight to eight am
Feet bloodied
No plans but thai food,
Driving up and down the same streets over and over and over and over
Never finding parking
I’m never driving
I don’t even know how
Sorry i missed your birthday party
I was trying to figure out
Where to move and i was so scared
Walking down Englewood, crossing at Prospect, continue down Englewood, turning right onto
School, continuing down School, taking a left down the path, walking down the path
The right song playing, the blackstone river, the sun coming up.
Post fourth of july facetime when he talks to me about how he just threw up so much
Waiting
Finally telling him about chicago
He doesn’t mention the other he
We are all fine
Therapist’s permission
Plane ticket
Cousins continue to support and love
Cashing in bonds
Saying goodbye to therapist
Getting a tattoo with mom
Running away from every problem
Solving all of them

Jo Barchi is a writer from Rhode Island. They currently live in Chicago where they work in an ice cream shop. They are an editor at Ghost City Press. Their work has appeared in Shabby Dollhouse, and elsewhere.