snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails

(originally written aug. 2022)

16 - the boy tips his head back and laughs, fluorescent lighting catching on his jawline, the bridge of his nose, glances off his eyelashes like stray drops of water, and something catches in your throat. this boy that coats your teeth with the taste of table wine, sweetbitter, fruit and flower and aged silently for years in the darkness, wooden and hollowed. your tongue catches on your canine tooth. he's all desert dust and sweat and sunlight.

desire has a lot of names. 

his adam's apple bobs as he swallows and you can feel it alcohol-hot in your throat, settling somewhere in your sternum, something between warm and burning.

envy tastes the same as longing, in the end.

 you drag your eyes away like ripping off a scab and hurry out of the aisle - it’s just wednesday, in a walmart, it’s whatever, it’s fine. you want things you can’t have, which means you want to fold yourself into him, like lovers, like origami. unspun under his hands, into him. to press your fingers to the slots between his ribs and sink into them, and there, find your own skin to shed out of this frame and into your own.