Scratched
He does not kiss me, as if he believes my lips
are the key to my heart or his,
calls me buddy lest I confuse myself
as something more important
than a lunch break, does not take his time touching me,
buries his face between
my neck and the sheets
so he doesn’t have to look at me.
He comes too quickly.
Apologizes.
Does not do anything about it. Each time,
I lie there trying to figure out why I let a man inside of me
who does not respect the fact
that I let him inside me. Tell myself,
There will not be a next time
I let there be a next time.
I get caught in a cycle of self-depreciation.
Convince myself it is a mutual usage of flesh
even though I get absolutely nothing out of it.
I dress silently, grateful
for the darkness. I feel equal parts
disappointment and disappointed.
Feel like I know better, like I am scratch vinyl
hitching continuously at the same point,
wondering when I will learn
to stop playing the warped side.
I crawled into his bed,
ignore his stoic demeanor and allowed him
to be selfish with my body.
But last time I did not hold my tongue,
I tell him as I’m leaving:
You may want to look up what foreplay means.
He apologizes again but does not do anything about it.
I am still playing the warped side,
still battling to understand what my body deserves,
and I make mistakes,
let the wrong hands touch me, tell myself:
There will not be a next time.
And if there is, I hope he will apologize,
but I won’t give him the chance to do anything about it.
I hope I’ll finally learn
there is no such thing as a warped side.
About Talicha
I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan I fell in love with poetry in kindergarten when my teacher, Mrs. Johnson, gave us a poem to read about being five years old and then I remember writing my own version. I was hooked. Of course every thing I wrote back then could be considered elementary (do you see what I did there?) but it was the start. Around the age of eight I decided without a doubt I would become a poet one day even though I had no idea what that meant aside from writing poems about the stray kittens in my backyard.