Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey is a California transplant studying creative writing in Portland, Oregon. Their work appears or is forthcoming in publications such as Beaver Magazine, JMWW, and Gone Lawn. They are a prose reader for VERDANT, a mediocre guitarist, an awe-inspiring procrastinator, and a truly terrible swimmer. They can be found on X/Instagram @esmepromise.
It was little and it was fast and it was nothing. In the heavy dark my neck was a fencepost stringing barbed apologies between my body and everyone else’s. Obscure lessons, whispered the man in the hurricane. How bitter the winds were, how they peeled me from my skin. How I wanted to be fast and small and nothing at… Read more →