Confessional

Fall Poetry Contest - Top Ten Finalist
Marquesa Rotuski

I heard: the whisper of his spine grinding
against the wall, egg-shell, bare.
My skeleton fingers held him steady
my ear caught his pink lungs tremble
the collision left a mark, the ridges of him
scratching the plaster, what should have been
enough. I am greedy, and his hot song-breath
left condensation along my chapped January lips
while any recognition of the way things would be different,
after, I swallowed. I found myself licking off traces
of the story his tongue wrote along my mouth,
salty and cynical. And then he was embedded in me,
inside the millions of tiny chambers that form a whole
real, breathing thing, with thin skin boasting a tie-dye
of purple, green, braided veins and blood flowing
suspiciously underneath. Usually all too aware
of what is transpiring on every inch of me,
I now can only feel where his calloused fingertips
last touched, chilly along my sharp angles,
calling up goosebumps, smelling of orange peels
and that backwoods bar. “Two Hail Marys’ and a
good night’s sleep should do the trick,” he says.