says I’m divine like

a banana split he can’t say

no to. When he calls my name

he shouts pomegranate and fake orgasms,

honeybees and dandelion pollen.

I ask him if he knows

I do my makeup in the reflection

of the TV, or that I once moved

to New York to lose fifteen pounds.

I ask if he knows I stopped writing poems

just to prove that I don’t feel anything.

He says no, but remembers the time

I kissed the sweat from his temples and

said it tasted like marshmallow cereal.

He says, nobody has ever told him

something like that before.

Later, when I ask him in leather seats

to go west with me,

and fireflies drop dead from my mouth,

he shakes his head, asks if I know about

the children there,

how they

finger-paint with rattlesnake blood—

how you can hear the clicking of their tails

echo against the window

on the nights you can’t sleep—

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Paige Leland is a native of Mid-Michigan who graduated with a BA in Creative Writing from Grand Valley State University last December. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Chicago Literati, The Tahoma Literary Review, The 3288 Review and more.