by Sarah Noell
One Night Stand
Because when she walks into the room, they’ll make sure they have a record on. They’ll make sure whatever’s spinning will spin her dizzy. They want to look at her looking at the vinyl sleeve, watch her give a small smile and hear her speak some unfamiliar words from such a familiar-looking face. She makes them want to put on the right song, because her eyes sing The Velvet Underground and her mouth weeps Neutral Milk Hotel and her hair looks like Jimi’s. And when her face fuses with theirs, they’ll feel like they’re up on stage with Lennon, or slouched smoking on a leather couch in a dimly lit room with Dylan. Even though it’s only for a night, she makes it feel like it’s been a decade. Even though it’s not love, she looks like it. She’s candied with consolation and slender in her sex. He lies next to her loving her classical nose, her modest curls, her standard slimness and her familiar height. She fits in his arms; she fits the night. She looks like love, but not tonight. One day she might be, but not tonight. Tonight their bodies are a mini city, trafficking kisses and creating earthquakes.
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Femme Fatale
Her body was her home. And the lost men that would frequent it found it so humbling they often left out of fear. To be humbled by her body, her quiet touch, a kiss on the knee on the hip, left them aching. The emptiness that had nested itself deep in their psyche was ran out by her soft curls, an accidental brush to their cheek and breath of soaped skin was all it took. She was at home in her body, inviting them willingly to open her up and sink deep into the comfort of roaming hands, open mouths and closed eyes. They would find in her a temporary home, so fatal to their nomadism that the moment she entered a room they were either instantly frightened or already akin to her gravity. All she asked was that they meet her in the moment the heart was so translated the two could speak without words. But when they did, when they met her in the sweetness, their hearts would fail, break and without comparable strength, would leave before dawn.
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Eve
When I arise with you there is no shame. It has been weeded and plucked, discarded from our contentment. I will rise beneath tangled sheets and curls to stretch my arms wide. Arching my naked back and shifting my shoulder blades, I roll the evening off my bare chest. And I will look at you in an ordinary way, liking your jaw line as it parallels the pillow. My bare feet meet bare wood, as I walk, toes first, to the kitchen. You arise, after a while, to meet me in the window beams. Without a thought we’ll greet each other, our nakedness not letting on we could have been so tangled together. With your hands on my smooth shoulders you watch my wrists flip eggs. I tilt my smile up to you and find you are my Adam and I am so shamelessly your Eve. Unaware of the sour citrus of the societal fruit that bares shame in bareness. I am guiltlessly yours and forever my own.
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