Bold Scratches

You held my hand as if it contained my soul, the wetness of your palms assuring that you understood the meaning of slippery: How people slide through one another like a deck of cards, constantly flipping for a better hand. Never seeing the detailed combination they have staring before them: You appreciate a real hand, with cracked lovelines of all the gangsters and whores before, with family lines that trail 360 around the wrist and disappear into veins. You will never know what it meant that you held my hand gently, instead of fucking me harshly for a better deal.

we blew the smoke of cheap cigarettes

across the patio table at one another.

thinking somehow if our lips could pout enough

that european boys would realize

how american girls liked to play.

the church loomed across the street

with the doors like large open hands

and although i knew you had pleasured yourself

earlier with the slip of a round white tablet down

a soft supple throat, i could not help but pull you into

a world i felt familiar with -

we take the time to screen over paintings

and to feel the wooden seats creak with our weight.

people take pictures of the cross at the front,

but i want the moment itself to sink in without having

to prove it with a photograph.

"it’s beautiful," you say, clicking camera buttons.

but i can tell you are only admiring the architecture.

once again,

only comfortable with surfaces.

"hipbones mock the

elasticity of your skin.

selfish girl,