by L Scully
I
You watch the movie with your black denim shorts digging into your thighs. Your heart burns but this time it’s not heartburn as you watch two friends kiss in a rainy cave of plastic-shrouded windows. In the movie his hand curls around the boy hand just the way your girl hand curled around hers in the dirty bathroom. You both have long hair then, lipsticked nights in the bathroom. No windows there. You touch her breasts under fluorescent bulbs and her straight hair gets wrapped in your curls.
II
When you’re a straight girl you go to a gay club with your best friend and find a shirt on the ground. Designer, discarded. The undulating bodies pay no mind to your souvenir as you take it from the floor and run hand in hand, laughing. When you start sleeping together you wear the shirt as a trophy. There’s a film photo of you in it, no pants, just designer t-shirt, smoking a joint with your hair up on the balcony. You recite to her Sylvia Plath and she takes your picture and you race on bikes to the flea market where you wet your mouths with peaches that you’ll taste again later on.
III
At some point during the movie you see her face out of the corner of your eye, next to you. You still wear her underwear. You reach down and smooth them beneath your black denim shorts.
L Scully (they/them) is a queer writer and double Capricorn currently based in Boston. They are the co-founder and prose editor at Stone of Madness Press. Find them in the ether @LRScully.
Emerge Literary Journal 