enchanted

after Lorde

in the dark, i find a new boy’s tongue in my mouth like the searching hand

of a clock: the witching hour, the rhythm of his hips, magic

against mine. sweat pools at his nape, soaking his dress shirt,

but i grip a handful of hairs, pulling his sour heat into my palm.

when he tucks his name into my ear, the syllables bounce from me

like echoes. by the second kiss, i excavate

transformation from his depths, taste the tang of gunmetal.

adrift in the noise, we talk of english: the books he likes, filled with girls

with no faces, his creased slacks, my fairy-tale lace, his archive on nepali history.

when he asks me who i am, i tell him i am a writer instead of my name.

will you write of me, he asks. maybe, i answer, as if i am not cataloging

each brush of our lips as proof of his pleasure, as confirmation i am a sickness

worth catching. i leave him fever-stricken, spent, twisted sheets a lingering symptom.

the next morning i scrawl his name like evidence into every page—

evidence not of him, of his teeth flashing technicolor in the night,

but of my body’s capacity for beauty, my legs a switchblade

sharpening with every minor kill. listen, i want to say

he changed me. that throwing my first kiss into the face

of a boy i never see again fashioned me into a woman, meaning wanted,

meaning i didn’t hate the way his canines combing my lips for more,

didn’t gag on the slime of warm beer and sweat.

listen: i want to say he was worth it, that the oblivion of his mouth

and the silence of mine translated me into the minor deity i’ve always been.

after midnight, i walk home alone under broken streetlights,

dreaming of a happy ending, bricks blistering my bare feet.

after the spell, i wasn’t even beautiful. just a girl with one less kiss to give.