sexuality – Undusted Corners

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A pair of fading bruises the size of thumbprintspaint my inner thighwhere you once marked me as yours,though you were never mine. kfw 2024

CW: reference to sexual assault 1. He was trying to prove that I wasn’t a lesbian. Or so he claimed, when he didwhat he insisted that he had to do,while his intellectually disabled brother watched cartoons just outside the closed bedroom door. I was 18. He was 21. When he was done,I drank wine coolersContinue reading “out-living”

C. × sinensis

The most surprising orangeI’ve ever eatenwas from a street vendor in Londonin 1997. Had I ever had citrus grown in the Mediterranean? My grandfather would send us home from our visits to Florida with mounding bags of citrus from the trees in his yard. Oranges, Tangerines, Grapefruit, I would never eat. My Yiayia and PappouContinue reading “C. × sinensis”

Proprioception

My body is sore from all the placeswe twisted ourselves into —tangled together across the reclining seat at the end of your sofa. I try this morning to read a book, but my mind wandersto your lips on mine — your breath in mine — its rise and fall and catch —the way you moveContinue reading “Proprioception”

Hypotheticals

At the commencement of our walk together the other day, a friend shared that they had been asked by someone nearing their quarter-century birthday to write down advice they would have given themselves when they were 25. I have thought about this frequently in the days since. When I was 25 I was already twoContinue reading “Hypotheticals”

the body (second movement)

I. A woman sat in a rocking chair in front of my house and cheerfully enumerated to me and the other mothers in attendance the ways in which her church taught members’ pre-adolescent daughters that if they had sex outside of/before marriage they would be permanently damaged. “You give each girl a balloon and theyContinue reading “the body (second movement)”