To call what I am feeling a ‘crush’ feels inexact. It is not puppy love. It is not new relationship energy. It is not lust. It is an uncontrollable romantic desire.

It is not grounded in our friendship or my attraction to her. It is more of an obsession. A desperate need for her to feel the same way about me. A craving. A pang. A wildness of the heart that is as frightening as it is pleasant.

It is an unmoored, unmooring thing, drawing me ever upwards in lazy, undirected arcs almost — almost — against my will, ever closer to the sun.

Six tales of love. Six tales of need, of desire, of how to live with the ones you cannot live without. Sawtooth may be a nothing town in a flyover state, but those that live there are no less real for it. They bear all the same emotions as anyone else, have all the same needs.

• Jump - Some folks were just built to jump. What do you do when that gets to be too much?
• Limerent Object - Dee Kimana, an ex-seminarian coyote, is in love. Maybe. Perhaps? His constant doubts plague him, and as he strives to journal his way towards greater understanding of himself and his emotions, he delves deeper and deeper into the past.
• Gigs - The gig economy, while useful for providing some income to those in need, comes with its own downfalls and dangers, as Winter soon finds.
• Sorting Laundry - It’s weird what you remember from childhood, isn’t it? Almost as weird as what brings those memories to the surface.
• Morning Of -Surgery and airports — two places where you give yourself into your trust in professionals. But where, exactly, does that point lie?
• Of Foxes and Milkshakes -Two foxes, one vanilla-flavored kiss.

Content Warnings

Jump contains mentions of sex and emotional abuse. Limerent Object contains strong religious themes. Gigs contains mentions of misogyny. Sorting Laundry contains mentions of transphobia. Foxes and Milkshakes contains homophobia.