oxytocin (over the counter)

a poem by Savannah Massey

washed with floodlights, you hold me 
                           in the backseat of your mother’s car 
and i feel like i’ve done something really awful this time—like 
       kissing a girl is the same as shoving pills down my throat 
until my stomach fills. 		when there is just skin between us, 
                                                                                    you trace fingers 
                over my bare ribs and i feel your heart beat 
through your sternum. our       i’ve missed you’s        are fogging 
up the window—each exhale collapses between headrests 
                                                  while i overdose on guilt 
                                    and promise to love you 
like i’m still holding a full bottle.                                   i want this to be nice—
                                 i really do—but it all feels wrong and maybe 
                    it would be alright   	if your 
palms were a little more calloused or your hair was a little shorter. 
                                                             before taking our clothes off,  
                                            i said i’d burn in hell for you 
          and i        really        tried to mean it 
                              but this car is                            hot 
and my stomach is 	              full.

✶

Savannah Massey (she/her) is a student attending the Mississippi School for Math and Science. There, she is editor-in-chief of the MSMS literary magazine, Southern Voices. She is a YoungArts winner with distinction for writing. The goal of her work is to take a very personal emotion, drop it into a new context, and make the feeling universal. Her work is seen in over 25 magazines and institutions, including Sterling Review, Ephemera Prize Anthology, and Only Poems.