Talia

By Anamika Kumari

Talia, you think about the future a lot.

We sit naked in your bathtub every weekend

when your dad is out drinking

and every time, I think of different ways to

soak with you into a timeless obliteration,

but you always sit across to me

with your ankles locked and your head in the clouds

and I just know, that you’re thinking about how

your skin is going to rot faster when you turn twenty-five,

and how I am probably going to break your heart

two weeks from now— and how one day,

you are going to get bored of your own dreams,

but all I can think about is your sucking your mouth off.

You only watch soft porn

and listen way too much of Sufjan

and Patrick Watson and I oblige for a minute,

but tomorrow is an illusion and all I want

is to spill in your bathroom floor and

sleep right under your skin.

You hate the taste of whiskey

and you kiss like an unwanted wildflower,

and I love it, I love every inch of your butterfly bones

and cotton candy eyes,

but I want you to put a knife through me lick

my rotting beatnik heart,

we’ve been good for so long—

throw me against a brick wall and let us burn my house down,

tomorrow, Talia, does not exist,

all of the time rests here in the space between our bodies,

seam it through our wandering fingertips

and let it go when it is time,

play the nastiest song and drink solvents

and remember just this:

there is no god more holy than you and me.

By Anamika Kumari