We are in your mother’s kitchen
and she is teaching me how to soak dishes,
the suds blooming onto my pink fingertips,
my blood running hot just below the surface.
We are at your mother’s dinner table
and fork down—
metal on glass—
food half-chewed—
she looks up from her plate
just to tell me that I’m pretty.
As if she hadn’t seen me
a hundred times before,
as if she was just now
seeing me for the first time.
Me,
with my womanhood
like the flesh of a peach
hiding right below the surface.
Me,
with skin so ripe
you could leave dents in it,
and when you peeled it back,
I’d be all hips and breasts,
all soft, and
sweet, and wet,
and shining.
Me,
who taught you how to kiss
and where to put your tongue,
how to bite the lower lip,
how to move from the mouth to the throat,
how to move down further
and still.
Me,
who could feel the pathways in my brain
contracting and
then expanding and then
splitting wide open
anytime your tongue danced around mine.
Me,
who once called our intimacy
“mind fucking”.
Me,
who did the minding
and then the fucking
but never in that order.
Me,
who would pick juvenile metaphors
out of my teeth
to read them out loud to you in the dark,
just to feel the vibrations in my own voice.
Me,
with all of my nerve.
Me,
with all of my lies.
Me,
who didn’t know how to go forward
without going backward first.
Me,
who broke it all apart.
Me,
who couldn’t put it back together.
Me,
who didn’t even know how to clean a dirty dish.
Me,
the pretty one.