all because you kissed me in the hallway
you slid a hand underneath my shirt
(i wonder which was softer, it or my skin?)
and my stomach didn’t turn with anticipation but
instead felt like it was home—
do you remember learning about kudzu, and how it invades everything it touches, and i hope you
get what i’m saying because to say it aloud would say too much—
our mouths were fresh with spearmint;
i was holding a damp towel to my chest that was waiting patiently to be hung on the back of a
bedroom door, and
your arms encircled my waist like english ivy,
clinging,
threading roots into the spaces between my cells
where you still live now.
you kissed me (of course you kissed me)
slithering like live vines into my mouth and down my throat,
curling in my stomach, tangling with my intestines, until i couldn’t tell what was you and what
was me,
“stay with me” i think you said, but i can’t remember because
the feel of your lips was still ringing in my ears (does that make any sense?)
you dimmed the lights and that one flip made it all real,
like the moment before the first drop of rainfall,
like the crushing remembrance of something lost,
grounding me in your sheets grey as thunderstruck ocean waves,
and i wondered what this was to you—what i was to you—
before your head dipped between my thighs,
and i forgot to ask.
Rachel Nicholson is a resident of Winter Garden, Florida, and a graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she earned her B.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her work has been featured in Atlantis Creative Magazine, 2 Rules of Writing, and The Amazine.