The two of us dart in and out among the wet, black, hemlock trees, hovering on the edge of something we don’t quite want or understand—part girl, part woman, part hunted animal.

shapeshifting dunes 
the aches 
of new breasts 

You see something glistening among the pitch and needles. We rush over to see what it is: a dirty magazine showing off the unbelievable charms of Cherry. A young woman not much older than we are, with a fifty-five-inch bust, and piles of bare flesh spilling off every page.

She looks just like you. Her feet are tiny. Her skin the same peaches and cream. And just like you, her body—her sex—is insistent, impossible to ignore.

We riffle through the pages. I stand, eyes riveted, hands jammed into pockets of too short jeans. You and Cherry are everything I am not. Beautiful. Fuckable. I feel a small but very real surge of desire—not to fuck you, but to be you. Also, a crimson wave of self-loathing. Will I never fill out these endless cartoon limbs?

musty sleeping bags 
reading Anaïs Nin 
by flashlight 

We confer about what to do. Decide we need to tell the adults. We gently lay Cherry down on a bed of moss, march back to the cabin, and let the parents know we’ve found something very bad. The fathers pull on their coats and boots, head out into the damp air to find the offending magazine. The mothers turn away and nurse their cups of tea.

We trail along behind the men. Watch from a distance as they pore over the pictures, lean in and nudge one another. We can’t hear what they are saying, but we know it’s ugly. You aren’t surprised. Men are dogs, you mutter.

buck-only season 
crashing through underbrush 
a startled doe  

The sky darkens and rain begins to pour. It is not a day for swimming, but the inky lake calls to us. We run the length of the dock and cannonball into the water one after the other, still in our jeans and t-shirts, shouting, Men are dogs! Men are dogs!

Eve Müller

lives in Eugene, Oregon with her sweetheart. She is the author of two books published by Plan B Press: Guide to the Ruins, a lyrical memoir (2024), and Birds and Saints (2025), a book-length poem about Rajneesh Puram, the cult that emerged in the Oregon desert in the 1980s. Her writing has also been published in About Place; Camas Magazine; Contemporary Haibun Online; Drifting Sands Haibun; Empty House Press; Marrow Magazine; Modern Haiku; Pine Hills Review; Sea Wolf Journal; Sequestrum; Thimble Literary Magazine; and Timberline Review among others; and appears in the anthologies Bookstore Clerks & Significant Others (Tsunami Press Anthology Series, Volume 1; 2023), and River Road: The Anthology: Volume One (released in January 2026 to celebrate nine years, 2014–2023, of the River Road Reading Series in Eugene, Oregon).

Müller was awarded a PLAYA artists’ residency in 2024 and won a Cirque poetry competition for “Tableau Vivants” (Vol. 15, No. 1, 2025). Her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, for the Touchstone Awards, and for Best Microfiction. When Eve is not writing, she bakes, hikes, conducts research on autism, hangs out with her mom and two fierce daughters, and skinny-dips whenever/wherever she can.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Cezanne in New York, CNF by Eve Müller in Sea Wolf Journal (10 April 2026)

⚡ As If I Were a Meadow/Antonietta, poem by Eve Müller in Thimble Literary Magazine (Vol. 8, No. 3, Winter 2025)

⚡ Murmuration, an excerpt from Müller’s book-length poem Birds and Saints in marrow magazine (Issue 10, June 2024)

⚡ Notes from My Father’s Bedside, CNF in Thieving Magpie (Issue 17, Spring 2022)