the answer's always yes

They called you babydoll for your first five years, until an agent at a passport office near Fresno forced your mother to name you something "real". She said that name aloud just once, and even now, only border guards at foreign checkpoints remember it as yours.

I think of that as I watch you slowly dropping clothing, like a trail of aliases, onto my bedroom floor. You're shedding little piles of sequins and mythology and I'm glowing inside, because I know that when I ask "should we...?" your answer will always be "yes".

Photo: Beatrice Neumann

obstruction

I've been running into your imaginary obstacles for so long,

my limbs are permanently bruised.

(Photo: Lucy Howard-Taylor)

milk teeth

“Kiss me with your teeth,” I insisted.

“It will hurt,” you whispered back.

“It won’t,” I assured you, extending the nape of my neck like a compromised mink,

coyly anticipating slaughter. “I’ll like it.”

With reluctance you obliged, tilting your head and grazing me on the horizontal.

With each pass you seized more flesh, enthusiasm intensifying.

And my breath convinced you I was right on both counts.

Only now do I realize you were referring to your pain.

diversion

She tried looking at something beautiful to keep herself from crying.

But it only made her cry harder.

Photo: Harpy

horse house

Last night I dreamt I had a horse. But I had nowhere to house him.

We wandered the streets of the city, dreading nightfall all the while.

No one wanted a girl with a horse. It was a fact that was confirmed repeatedly.

He and I persisted in silence, each feigning strength for the sake of the other.

Eventually darkness found us, both wishing quietly for sleep.

Photo: Delicious Aloysius

little sips

She only drank out of jam jars- tiny, ridge-lipped containers covered with raised glass berries. The smooth patterns depicted the type of fruit each jar formerly housed, a vitreous Braille that my fingertips tried time and again to decipher. Everything in her apartment was shrunken and makeshift, a gypsy dollhouse filled with rescued curios and ritual.

Those miniature vessels promoted her instinct to fawn, to allocate. She was forever springing from her antique stool to gift houseguests with fresh supplies of little sips, measured tokens of her love.

And it was with that same ceremony that she contained me, precious restraint still visible in the dark. Her command was sweet, like jars of phantom fruit realized. Possessive preservation- it was all she knew.

Photo: Nynewe