Seduction

Like a cigarette soft to the lips,

Seductive for how it slips between satin flesh and holds

Delicate kisses in red,

The nib scratches against parchment.

~

It feels good

Impermanent like the butt of the stick.

It flows and feeds and fades then drops

As ash at my feet but then it burns,

Burns against my lips

Neither pretty nor silky but bloody and bitten.

~

I still have the scar

From those skyscrapers and the burning midnight end

Pressed eagerly against my neck,

Sizzling into a pretty little mark.

A memory of a ghost.

~

It's shaped like your mouth,

The force that swallowed the heat of the burn

And left trails of cooling spit in its wake.

The pain vanished.

All the embers died.

~

That night I fell head over heels

Out of the passenger-side door

On that one hard turn coloured white with terror

And fell into the driver's seat

Right out of myself and into someone else.

~

I did not recognize the girl peering silently into the rearview

Nor did my hands move the way my own did.

But there was someone new,

The one reeking of sandalwood and cigarettes.

There was the taste of a villain on my tongue,

The dim song stuck on repeat on the car stereo.

~

Silver Serpent Books