EP

dismantleme:

if i could spend every day in waist-high shorts and red lipstick, i would.
i’d let my stockings slip down my legs and bunch at my knees, not take my eyeliner off, ever.
you’d follow me underneath one of those big old trees, the ones too thick to hug by yourself, and we’d fall and roll, wrapping ourselves up in elbows and thumbs.
i’d tell you i still hate whiskey.
you’d stick cigarette papers to my cheek.
pinecones stick into our thighs.
i would.

Sometimes

Sometimes you get an email from the transient genderqueer boi that you met in a small town library in New Mexico. The email is specifically about how the time you had in his tent hidden between the highway on-ramps was the most intimate and communicative sexual experience of his life. Then you remember that while this is exactly what you want to hear - that you are so in love - the object of your love is on a bicycle on his way to Guatamala on a timetable that’s nonexistant and that you will almost certainly never see him again. You pull your car over, you scream, cry, and beat your steering wheel with your wrists until you are badly, badly bruised.

Then you read the email again.

(submitted by tatna)

Opportunity

nightmarebrunette:

I am not naturally any sort of business woman, but when I’m in an airport, every time, I practically quiver with the vision of the profits that could be generated. Restaurant after restaurant advertises vacant and rumpled men, alone and looking hollow, or sitting with coworkers at the bar and ordering 11am drinks. Travel at the right times, to and from the right places, and you will see maybe one woman for every ten men. Ok so an airport brothel is too much to ask. But what about an airport strip club? A peep show booth? Right between the Fox News store and the TGIFridays imitation.

Rarely do these travelers look capable of genuine arousal or any type of interest in another human being. They live on sodas and snack food, shower with hard water and sleep on bleached tight sheets, see face after white middle-aged face that looks identical to their own. But trying for a turn-on would at least be familiar and distracting. My suspicion is that most would gladly pay to forget who they are, where they are and where they’re going.

”I’m going to have to fail you,” he said.
”Okay”
”It’s a brilliantly written essay, but it’s not what I asked you to do.”
”I know,” I must’ve appeared scared then, but I didn’t know yet that it was something he got off on, fear. He was short, but standing while I was sitting, making me look at him from below - bug-eyed, he seemed giantic. He always was bigger in one way or another.
He leaned over and touched my face. This is when everything crumbled inside of me, and I knew I was trapped.

As I was leaving his office, buttoning my jeans, fixing my hair, I said: ”Can I ask you for a favour?” I never called his name, though I felt I needed to there. It was unspeakable, in class he was mister Jones, here fear of too much intimacy made him nameless.
”I’m still going to fail you.”
”That’s what i wanted to ask for.”
”Could you come in next monday, please. I’d like to work on your essay some more.”
I couldn’t say yes, but he knew the answer anyway.

(submitted by shadowplay)

we lose the people we love
leading them blindly
through expectation and assumption
making them numb
until somone finds them again
introducing them tentatively
stripping them slowly
savoring their delighted discoveries
and welcoming them breathlessly back into the world

(submitted by Tom Smith)

When I Left You

i remember the way the vast expanse of terrible carpet overwhelmed our room
the mirrored closet doors that caught my horror just in time to throw it back to me
the wretched ceiling fan that loved us as much as it could muster on late nights in july
but this
this was september
all that was left was the mattress
i made everything else disappear
the hangers in the closet seemed almost like they would lose their grip
as they dangled naked
i vacuumed the pink square of floor three times
to avoid leaving behind an an errant earring
for you to find months later
but the mattress
it sat unflinching in the middle of the room
lost with the absence of our bodies
it’s white expanse chiseled into perfect right angles
like a block of ice that refused to melt

(submitted by Star St. Germain)