by Hannah Karpinski
it is summer in the poem and we are living
three of us, in some family apartment
on the fourth floor perhaps sixth
every day, the hiss of onions
in the pan, and the pasta
always has beans in it
stacked on top of one another
/another
/another
we can’t reach the ceiling
and the doorknobs
keep falling off
at night on the balcony:
your moonmouth on my neck
you tell me another new thing
the plants half crispy around us
I know nothing really
belongs to me, but somehow
I have arrived in this moment like a tourist
in my own life
where having an opinion is terrifying
and exhilarating/ means having
to surrender to my own publicness
I want to beetle on my back
with my legs up in the air
I want to grow wings and buzz
in circles around the ceiling
I want to melt across your lap
and her lap
and hers, with
my top off in some dewy bedroom,
the windows open, and I am saying
yes yes yes until I have nothing
left to say
I love every minute of this stupid life
of loving and not knowing
or caring where
to draw the line
of getting really good at something
and letting everybody watch
Hannah Karpinski is a writer and editor living in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lemon Hound, Commo Magazine, My Loves: Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press), and Lesbians are Miracles, among others. She is the Publishing Assistant for Montreal-based independent publisher, Metatron Press.