{Editor’s Note: Adult language ahead!}

Fourteen, always in the bedroom

brushing my hair too much
too much time naked
swooning

Religious services at the magazine
rack. Saying each of your
names under my breath scanning
glossy covers for your faces
swimming over tables of contents
invoking
scared sh**less I’ll find one or all of you
and me with only $4 in my pocket

and no photographs of any
of you on my walls.
I clip only articles compiling what
to anyone else could be cold
research. I keep the pages in safe
drawers fold and unfold them swallowing
each word when I’m ready when I’m
strong enough to take the distance
between need and flesh that
I already know will kill me if
I say it aloud.

Someday I will make that voyage with
a man who exists and try not to despise
his accessibility I will bring on
the bliss but hold back from giving
away the ruby too soon from
too soon becoming my other body
the lighter one
the one I learned I had.
Someday after fourteen I will cross over.
In two years, in six and sixteen
tonight, as I cup you
in my hand

and wait.

~

Relephant Reads:

Salty Rum Kisses. {Poem}

~

Author: Rachel Astarte

Editor: Alli Sarazen

Photo: Dennis Brekke/Flickr