the thing is, the world is falling apart, the sky is on fire and we’re sitting in the bed of your truck and we’re watching it burn and you’ve got some fuckin folk punk/midwest emoband playing on your bluetooth speaker and they’re singing about getting on your knees and praying for us—maybe one of us should—and i am made of something like want and i am unmade when you take off your shirt because the sky is on fire and it’s getting too goddamn hot, and all i can think about is how i want to tell you—you know—but that’s too soft and we’re not like that, you and me, we’re just not like that, no, because i’m pretending i’ve always been hard and lean and sharp like a man and you’ve always been hard and lean and sharp like a man because you were born a man when i wasn’t and that’s the fuckin catch, man, the world is falling apart, the sky is on fire and we’re sitting in the bed of your truck and i still can’t fucking tell you—but you know.
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Auden Patrick is a genderqueer writer who actually doesn’t want to see the world burn but wonders what would happen if it did. He’s a big fan of pop-up submission calls—his work can be found in HAD, and he can be found on twitter @patrickauden.
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image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 