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.