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Pheromones

The curve of you,

where the cheek meets the thigh,

is sweeter than lips strawberry

in a tinted photo

which is not your own anymore.

Instead savor

the place of skin wrapped by summer

clothes stretched as you run.

A prickle

of grass at the back of your neck

and sweat on your hairline,

delicate musk

in its stickiness trailing down,

down into the gentle creases

circling the mounds.

You create your own humidity.

Trap it here now,

to use it later or maybe

find it in memory

at that party where you sent the calling,

just sitting, testing,

like smoke in your favorite princess movies

and you were asked to dance.

The first time is power.

 

Twine them out, those summer tendrils,

use them only when you wish

although you heard once

people with synesthesia

see auras and they cannot be denied.

Try

to pull and retract

your affection on your whim,

keep it close against your chest or blow it

forward as you will,

that monumental surge of softness.

Sometimes fail.

 

Ensnaring, that’s a witch’s term

as green vines probe the earth,

and it need not apply to you.

What you do has no shame because

it’s echoed back, singing

on cornsilk and raven’s wing,

from when you exposed your throat.

We’re all slain from within, but

in spilling blood, we snatch another’s look.

 

There is no conquest,

only ebb and flow,

a frog wriggling in your palm

reeled in from the darkness.



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Saskia G
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