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we clung together at night
like children - yet not -
brought flesh to flesh
by fear, during daylight
i swept by her with my
skirt rubbing insistently
against my thighs
(which parted
mechanically, expecting
the dig of her nails)
and dared not look
at the freckled face
that i'd last seen
buried between my thighs.

john twisted my promise
ring about my finger easily,
as if greased by butter,
he kissed me with his rubbery
wet lips, liver lips my friends
called him when his back was
too straight and stiff for
my taste. promise rings were
meant to be placed in drawers
after the moon had gone full.

our coming together was
a communion, her linen white
bed holding our frames together,
the wine of her lips spilling
down my neck. obscenities
that sounded like prayers came
from my lips as we rocked together,
breast to breast. i dared not
shout them in that small dank
apartment. her mother was
away, where all promiscuous
mothers go when their
promiscuous daughters entertain
their girlfriends. at least that's
what was said as we lay
in the sweat slicked bed, our
lips meeting almost shyly.

john would slip me notes in
his tight, cramped hand in
between classes, his eyes
earnest, his whole heart
swimming (or is that drowning?)
in blue. it made me long for
deep black ringed with grey.
his clammy hands reaching
for my face, tilting it up
until we were like two halves
of a broken bookshelf.

we went into long beach
on those hot, sticky nights
where the sun had mated with
the white walls of her apartment,
sweat collecting on her upper lip,
ready for me to lick off.
in the night clubs we danced,
hip to hip, belly to belly.
lifting belly like gertrude stein
with her aider. except my aider
was a loud secret that
twisted my promise ring about
my finger. the music
pounding like the beat
of her heart on nights
when she'd wake up from
nightmares she could not
remember.

we clutched at one another,
hands like clumsy paws,
the pornography of it.
we were it. two in a bed
made for one, the stained
sheets and my bare back
to the frigidity i'd been
born into.

his face was locked
into the ring tossed to the floor
like a cheap trinket,

i turned to her.