by Kiki Nicole
There’s a pillow on my bed that reminds me of you,
so each night I press it against my breast
but the heartbeat I feel comes from my own chest and the heartbeat I feel
is the heart that I left inside the cage
of my chest and not inside of your mouth. I wish
you swallowed me and had the sense not to spit
me out. I wish you had held me there
on the roof of your mouth. I wish I could leave
stains on your tongue
that will never come out and the taste is one you can never get out.
Your mouth is a house where the rent is past due, where it stinks
of me inside of you, where
you wipe off your shoe on the bottom of my lip,
where you scrape me off your tongue before bed.
There is a bottle of water next to my bed;
it reminds me of you.
So each day I press my mouth to its cap and my tongue
wraps around the neck of the bottle like the bottom of your neck
and I wrap around my pillow like it’s the middle of your neck and I hope
this is a feeling
you find hard to forget.