How Girls Write About Lust

I had this image of homesteaded baking and limes,

Plucked from a tree, squeezed into pies,

Now your tongue coats the air, coats everything that I do,

I roll dough like it’s sexy and shiver at you.

Cause it was sheets and splayed hair, it was laughter and longing,

I trembled with fear and the forthright forthcomings,

Of my deepest dark dreaming, the me I could be,

With salt in the salt-spray, and your lips in the sea.

It feels like being freshwater, the way you take me apart,

String the sand round my throat and tunnel into my heart,

I sit in the rosebushes and lick you into the petals,

Funnel the garden with thorns, protection for my mettle.

And did you know, I didn’t think it’d happen for me?

I pictured sand lots and wine aunts and smut on the beach,

I sharpened my loneliness into cat claws and wit,

I prepared for the breakage, I accepted the hit,

But you’re so blond it’s bruising, and you don’t wear enough clothes,

And you laugh like the doorbell that welcomes me home.

And I wrap my arms round you, and I don’t let you go,

My face in your shoulder, I love and I know.

Take me to the dawn, stepping-stone me to summer,

Where the beach waves are blue as the eyes pulling me under,

Where the future is certain and plastered into my dreams,

And where we’re something forever, and you’re someone to me.