I wake with frosted breath under an unfamiliar armpit.
A foot I think is mine pretzels with Mystery Mans
replaying last night’s memories in my battered brain.
They scatter like exposed brick: revealing, trendy,
and fucking rough
enough to cut me open if I linger too long.
There’s that stench, the ~intoxicating in the moment~ one
(but painfully pungent morning after one) and I wonder
how hard do I have to work to get water?
Satiate me, please God I’ve been good…enough
lead me to water, I promise this whorse will drink.
I use every muscle to gulp, use the throat
he choked. I roll around my tenured tongue
in a hot haze I remember flesh, fun, four a.m.
fucking, felt finger-licking goooood.
Mystery Man, a tourist to my body
with a press pass that expires this morning
belonging now to the sky that has changed
colors seven times since I opened my eyes.
Don’t think too hard on it, just enough
to remember skin on skin on scorching
secrets, and regrets under the hot water
of hate. It melts me.
It’s amazing what you’ll get up to when you hate yourself.
Is it bad that I like this? The indiscretion
is incredible, the only way I feel immaculate.
If I leave now at least I can laugh about it,
the art of the ending.
Olivia Klein is a student at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Olivia has previously been published in the New Medium Press “Riff/t” Issue and the Write Launch Literary Magazine in their May 2021 issue. Olivia spends her time writing poetry, singing songs, and loving her cat, Otis.
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