‘hey so let’s do this again sometime’ by Emma Marie Jones

He looked at me with these eyes full

of something more than eye of something more than I

guess I expected or maybe I’m making it up because I’m sex-starved

or maybe I was hungry but anyway

his body was like wow and I kind of forgot what he looks like but

I memorised the pieces, long limbs wide mouth

sharp bones, and every time I put them back together in my head

it’s like I have to convince myself that such a body exists and that

beyond existing can with memory be called again to bend

at my touch to quicken and collapse and bend again and bend

again and bend.

So the next day I ordered a soy flat white and a bottle of sparkling water

at the usual place as though nothing had happened, as though I wasn’t hiding

blushing toothmarks underneath my clothes, and I walked

a little straighter smiling the way people do after they get laid for the first time in ages and I thought

that maybe people would see me from the window of the number 11 tram and think

that girl looks happy and I felt happy like those toothmarks were a bright bright light.

I keep doing this thing on weeknights where I get high and watch documentaries about how enormous space is how old our world is and how beautiful and I think I love the world, I think I love mankind and all creation but really I just love myself and I want the world to love me too and when I am confronted

with sublime infinity and my heart skips a beat it’s not for fear or wonderment at its own perfect suspension in the wide-thrown sparkling mess of things but a quietly wretched gratitude a reaching out to other hearts in other throats a clinging

to the beauty I am part of an urgent press against its surface rub and grunt a pull behind the navel like a need for it to touch me and to mark me to consecrate my faithless obstinate

jaw, or maybe I’m tripping balls and the pressure in my chest is only low potassium. I wonder whether

maybe he will write a song for me

maybe he will write a song for me

maybe I should eat a banana and change the channel.

I wonder if he’ll text me back. I wonder if one day

I’ll say hey remember our first date and how you stopped getting dressed halfway through putting your jeans on and kissed all my vertebrae one by one and I reached

between your legs from behind you and drew a word from your mouth and the air

in the dark room was heavy and smelt of spent lust but hummed

with knowing that this was not the last time no

not like last time and anyway

anyway at the end when he left he murmured

into my skin—

and oh I wish I remembered where so I

could touch the place the words touched—

he murmured

I’ve had a really nice time

I’ve had a really nice time