around a week or so before we parted, I exited the womb of the library to find him idling against the curb, exhaust fuming its spellbinding dance for a capnomancer, boarded the car with its intimate notes of tobacco & leather, the faulty seatbelt with its trick that only he could fasten, snug as a ribcage. he drove off, gravel ticking, our mingled breath…

During the larval stage of my rebirth, I ingested him passively. Certain relations are decreed by the inviolable will of nature. The way our mouths crave sustenance before our tongues have been granted the chance to know it, the same way that trees stretch grotesquely towards the sun. When he stepped on the podium and began to speak, my mind ignited.

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with a.d., one of our talented Issue 04 contributors. Based in Malta, a.d. is a bisexual poet and visual artist whose primary medium is photography, especially...