Missy Matchstick 4/17/26 Missy Matchstick 4/17/26

Circling

She disappears into dark water, and desire follows close behind. Set in moonlight and undertow, this poem drifts into the charged space where surrender starts to feel like instinct.

Missy Matchstick 4/15/26 Missy Matchstick 4/15/26

Kelp Knotted in Silk

A lush, erotic meditation on contact and transformation, where kelp and silk entwine into a darker, more intimate form of beauty. What emerges is not innocence but aftermath.

Missy Matchstick 4/4/26 Missy Matchstick 4/4/26

Kelp Fever

A lush, unsettling meditation on desire and transformation, where beauty is altered by contact and rendered into something stranger, more physical, and impossible to name.

Missy Matchstick 3/18/26 Missy Matchstick 3/18/26

Above The Atmosphere

A romantic dreamscape that imagines a cosmic love untouched by catastrophe, where trust, wonder, and tenderness become the laws of gravity.

Missy Matchstick 3/17/26 Missy Matchstick 3/17/26

The Stork Will Make Two Stops

A reflective and emotionally grounded narrative that explores queer family building through reciprocal IVF, centering choice, partnership, and the meaning of being wanted.

Missy Matchstick 3/14/26 Missy Matchstick 3/14/26

I Recently Learned That Men Flirt With Me

A comedic, observational essay about heterosexual courtship rituals, lesbian visibility, and the surreal experience of being flirted with by men you fundamentally do not register.

Missy Matchstick 10/27/25 Missy Matchstick 10/27/25

U-Bahn Femme (Jan. ‘19)

A stark, introspective essay that uses Berlin’s winter landscape and history as a mirror for memory, restraint, and the quiet, necessary work of becoming yourself.

Missy Matchstick 10/26/25 Missy Matchstick 10/26/25

Pledge Allegiance to My Chaos

A tender, whimsical essay written as an open letter to my future wife, turning domestic quirks, emotional candor, and everyday longing into a blueprint for lasting love.

Missy Matchstick 10/15/25 Missy Matchstick 10/15/25

Cape Town Awaits

A fierce, lyrical essay that casts Cape Town as both dream and threshold, exploring queer desire, self-worth, and the refusal to settle for love that cannot rise to meet you.

Missy Matchstick 10/13/25 Missy Matchstick 10/13/25

Glass Closet

Part confession, part self-drag, part queer excavation, this essay traces a late lesbian awakening through memory, shame, humor, and the signs that refused to stay buried.

Missy Matchstick 10/10/25 Missy Matchstick 10/10/25

Smog City Siren

A loud, glittering coming-out poem about West Hollywood, bad decisions, good lighting, and becoming too much in exactly the right way.

Missy Matchstick 10/9/25 Missy Matchstick 10/9/25

We’re Full, Try Grindr

A biting lesbian visibility essay that turns the male gaze into a punchline, and reclaiming lesbian identity as boundary, a refusal, and a glittering threat.

Missy Matchstick 9/14/25 Missy Matchstick 9/14/25

A Rosary in the Glovebox

Written in the tradition of George Ella Lyon’s “I Am From,” this poem assembles a self from rosaries, winter, food, nursing, and inheritance, tracing the sacred and bruised geography of a life.

“The Palms STill Stand. Crisp Silhouettes against a Hazy Sky, tall as guilt and just as thin. They line the driveway in symmetrical grief, as if trying to offer shade to something that can’t be cooled. Everything here is sun-bleached and wind-chapped, held together by spider webs and memory. The breeze tastes like eucalyptus and the air smells like dust that used to be skin.”

— Noncompliant: A Sunglassed Elegy From Camarillo