Jeremy R. Quintero: Poetry.

Looking out past the runway, I dream of big city lights. With you, I always dreamt of desert nights. Stars filling the deepest black, endless. Hands together in a circle. Prayer upon the ashes of our forefathers. A lack of foreskin between us.

Naked, eyes blue (green? blue), wrists cuffed to a bed of electronic devices. You woke me up with a panic and I slipped a twofer in your pocket. Clad in only our underwear, skin touching skin like we are sinning. You make me feel like you’re sinning.

I do my best now to ignore the what-ifs. What if it had all been okay? I refuse to think about it. Your cheating heart would have been the end of me (nearly was). A fleck of spit on your lips upon the lake where we never kissed (it was dry back then).

How do you curve your body? How do you curve my name? How do I curse your name? It was easier when I hated you. It was easier before I knew you. Before I knew any of you. Back when my only responsibility was myself.

Gun-kissed smile in the back of the trunk. You never made me cum.

Your life needs to stop bothering me so much. I feel trapped by your niceties and bludgeoned by your actions. A six-year wound that refuses to close shut. Suggest I should shut you out.

Where would we be if she and everyone else had been okay with all of it? Would it have stood the test of time? They did it to us. You did it to yourself. I did my best to untrap myself but got hooked in your fishing line. I was the bait for your sexual experiments. A showcase of lust that I couldn’t quit. I fell for you, a favor you couldn’t return.

You keep fucking up my life and I keep forgiving you for it. You’re barely worth a poem most days of the week.