strangers dressed as a tarantula, an angel, & a puerto rican ghost are drinking the night into quicksand, & they are hoping to pour tequila shots in me, screaming, COME ON! BE FLEETING WITH US. i drink & drink & drink, & we dance raw, all as rivers in cumbia. when our hips ache & tire, a boy barbie shouts, slurs, stutters, LET’S TELL SOME WHOREOR STORIES, which gets everyone going, squealing & spilling: we tell tales of growling married daddies, smoking & smashing in the backseat of trucks, nights zoom zooming between big dicked men. when it’s my turn, i head to the bathroom & don’t share because the last boy i touched broke into rainfall the moment i embraced him, right after he told me he was just diagnosed with hiv, right after saying he’d understand if i didn’t want to sleep with the sick. i held him, a giant, all night, my bones soft yarn—like i hoped someone would do for me—& tried to remind him that his body was only in free-fall if he believed it. & in the morning, he kissed me, licked some of his fingers, & shoved them deep inside of me, whispering, let me breathe air into you too.
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“strangers breathe air into you” was a finalist in The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest 2024.
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