Olivia Arboneaux

We fucked
like harpooning a whale
Fins twitching                    my own arms     twitching
Trying to hold onto anything but
Everything
kept falling
my tongue, in my throat
your dick, in my body
my blood down my thighs, quickly
on your ivory sheets

like sprinkles like confetti like
You like
I thought you were my best friend
the way I said, “I trust you”

But you

are a “Sorry, Man”        a smiling man
a “just our position” man
your head in your arms

Slowly, all at once,

a wedding ring you give me. I say no.
You say “I love you” a thousand times. I say no.      Should it matter?

You fuck me
when I am sleeping
I wake up    you’re inside me
Your hands hold my throat, like a ring
Your mother died and you want four daughters
And you hurt me
Like a thousand likes on Instagram

“Why did you like his post?” you ask.

“He is my brother,” I say.
“He is another man.”

And I-
I am a thousand trembling constellations
My mother’s hip bones. My father’s nose. My laughter,
the violet bruises that wavered like hair
Underwater I tried to make pain beautiful but there is nothing.

I was naive but not
an accident
You blamed me
found my empathy to be a weakness   in the hospital
I texted you and you never
responded.

Isabella Neblett

(reformatted)

John Delgado

i met love today
in the shaft of an elevator
empty and sterile
turned
all momentum and tension
and before, kissing him
was like kissing bits of broken glass
but i would rather plummet to my epitaph,
soundtrack: smooth jazz and the
tautness of our intertwined breaths
broken rope instead of broken home
than spend another second, alive
licking the blood from the serrated
edge of his tongue

Hannah Mclendon