On this side of having sex for the first time I imagine your mouth on my skin, on my skin. Your fingers pulling me taut against the confines of myself. The way my body will welcome you. Hear me and your name, taste me on your tongue, feel me in and around you. The delicate combinations only lesbians know how to seek. I can’t remember if I existed before this moment when my identity and my dreams and my cum await your mouth. Tie me to your trajectory, lash me hard against the promise of my youth. The beat of my heart separates old blood from new and puddles at your feet. Where were you before me, where was dawn before this heat? Gliding at last in the waters of hope I trade on the tide of your gravity, swept into safe harbor at last. 

 I am eager for you, anxious as an untrained puppy just taken from the teat. Waiting for the sounds of joy, a text message, your footsteps, my voice wearing out from hours of connection, the pitch of me while you are hot against my skin. I feel young. Inhale with me like it’s the first time you touched your own in another. Bloodied with all the ways I am ruined before my death, wet and gaping holes for you to fill and you are good at it. Ballots, bullets, buried in the person because confluence is conflict, in the end. Touch me, I am hungry. Touch me and let me bite you, sharp needles for skin that has known sick already, let me inside and let me eat through your marrow cell by cell. I did not promise to be kind or healthy, only that I would live.