journal entries

birds or boxing

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with birds. Flight patterns. Migration. Wings. Traveling by air. The topography of a bird like the wrist, the bard of the wing, the crown, the mandible, the tarsus, the axillers.Everywhere I go bird references occur. I sat next to a girl wearing the same shoes as me and she says “we’ve inherited our sorting habits from a flock of birds.” I bought a journal made from a 1941 copy of A Field Guide to Western Birds. One night I was out, there was a pigeon family nested on the terrace. My best friend sent me a starling necklace. I very much want a small flock of birds tattooed on my shoulder. I have a ‘flight mix’ full of songs about flying, wings, birds, butterflies, the sky, clouds, rising, flying.

I’ve been flying high for miles. Months. Examining the ground below me for a pattern, a map, direction.But it’s no longer time for flight.

It’s time to fight.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

Leave a Reply