Haha

Poetry
Written By Erik Keevan

I laugh and I 
type haha. Always
haha, never lol or lmao
or rofl. I write haha
because a girl I had
a crush on in ninth grade
told me she hated lol (this
was before lmfao, both
the acronym and the band)
and I thought strict 
adherence might mean I could
strictly adhere to her. It didn’t,
but we once found a cherry bomb
wedged between the slats
of a wooden picnic table
and set it off in a park . We 
left before the cops came and
I think of us laughing haha
as we ran,
giggles echoing like notifications 
when she messaged me on
AIM because text messages
cost 10 cents apiece. I had
to hurry home after school
and turn on my dad’s bulky 
PC and kick-start the
internet like a moped
to try to make a 
girl I liked laugh so she could 
send me haha.

Erik Keevan

Erik Keevan is a horror writer, playwright, and poet with a focus on mental health and societal problems. His work has been published in Brushings Literary Journal, Tales from the Crosstimbers, Horror Tree’s Trembling with Fear series, and performed as part of the Victorian horror troupe Phantasmagoria. Most recently, his story (Traffic)Circles won the 2025 Crypticon Writing Contest. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Poetics and Creative writing at the University of Washington to make sure that he becomes sufficiently pretentious.

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