It was the first time I had seen you in over a year and, from the moment I got into the seat of your truck, I knew it would be the last.
The formalities that staggered across our lips were dripping with all of the water between us that never quite made it under the bridge, and I felt the channel narrowing as you tapped the steering wheel with those nimble fingers.
You drove to a parking lot and I didn’t ask why. I had a boyfriend, but I couldn’t remember his name. Not then, with your eyes on me and those fingers pretending not to creep toward my thigh. You started to talk about the past, our past, and your voice cracked. You started to cry, but you held it in; you were raised in the South, and that breeding is something you could never entirely shake off. Men were engineered from birth to be stronger than the women they were assumed to marry.
But what do you do when every pair of legs with nylons pooled at the ankles is lacking something essential?
And I let your hands make their journey, the fingerprint post cards of lust and nostalgia stamped with your rolling sweat. My pants came off and my eyes closed. The world didn’t disappear, it didn’t stop spinning; you didn’t kiss me and I didn’t lean to your face, those Stonehenge features that cast shadows onto your skin to hide anything you ever feel. I let you taste me before you drove me back home, silent and scanning the yellow lines in your headlights like they were etched with your script, something that would keep us together.
I stood on my porch and watched you lick your lips, recognizing the flavor of my last goodbye.
(submitted by inchesgiven)
