A SERIES OF IMPERFECT ORGASMS
Michael Stewart
And we slipped out from the window into the branches of a tree, over our chain-linked fence, through the weeds and silt, across the dirt road, until we met with other flashlights, occasionally a small fire.
My sister with a ratty pair of tennis shoes. With glossed lips that carried a taste, but only a hint of any color. If you could circumvent her teeth you would find twine coiled around her tongue with seashells knotted in its twists, powdery down feathers, smoke from a
corner-store cigar. Iodine. Amber. A paper wasp's nest and her toenails painted a blushing red.
The girls nervous about their new breasts, small holes in their jeans. The older boys offering warm beer. People drifting in and out of the light, moving just beyond the trees. My sister coming back and sitting close to me, her jeans against my cold, bare legs. Imagine, if you like, the subtle grass stains on her panties. The red lines wrinkled
into her skin from a cheap pink bra. The dark thumbprints along her thighs. The quiet way we would walk back home.
And me. If you took me and unclothed me you would find stained underwear, teaspoons bent into bones and the synthetic fluff of cheap pillows made from moisture and weight into a semblance, a hazy sketch with greasy hair.
Sometimes hard park benches, and once with whiskey. Once a girl with an overfull jacket, her ear infected from the piercing. Sometimes a car parked near us, the yellowed headlights and music slipped furtively from open windows.
The rest is what happened to our lives.