Your house swallows
many things.
Socks.
Occasional boxer briefs.
My resolve.
Lost amongst the bedclothes,
pressed between a mattress
and headboard.
Emerging in the mouth
of an elegant rag doll.
Never as essential
as when its loss was first noted.
Perhaps, you laugh,
it was never here.
And instead
is floating
on the surface of a lake.
Or captured
between layers of neon,
smelling of cardamom.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eddie Hollis Edwards (she/her) writes like she breathes—out of necessity. A gender non-conforming lesbian poet with three kids and a spine made of fire, she lives in Austin, Texas, where the heat never lets up and neither does the poetry.
She runs The Island of Misfit Poets at Birdhouse Books—a queer mic for the ones who never quite fit the mold—and spits truth at Every Word Poetry at the Vortex, The I Scream Social at Alienated Majesty Books, Austin Poetry Slam at Barrel of Fun, and any corner of the city that will let her bleed into a mic.
Her poem “Immortality” will show its teeth online at Quill of the Goddess in October 2025. “When I Was a Boy” is set to punch its way into the premiere issue of Radical Catalyst Journal.