A Year

By Ashley Simmons

Winter

I think too often of my childhood, of near homelessness and the feel of a belt buckle on my back and thighs, and the hopelessness of feeling the person I love slipping quite literally through my hands. I do not like these things but the thought of them persists despite my preferences.

Spring

I have dreams where we make ecosystems in the spaces between our bodies, in the cavern between the crooks of our necks. We sip and pour our breath into each other, and we are separate but nearing liquid in the tightness of our embrace. You let me touch your neck and take the meat between my teeth without fear of these ancient urges, and you are soft.   

Summer

I sweat and hear the 100 year old man on his bike yell “sweet ass” to my face, and I’m mad, and I know for a fact that he hasn’t seen my ass, and I never want to “interact” with him again, and I want to explain that his vocalization is misogynistic nonsense, and I want to tell him to suck devil dick, and I want to cry. I know that he wants a power over me, and honestly he’s got it.

Fall

I wish I could convey the consuming hollowness of being hungry, how the entire torso begins feeling as though it is becoming a sinkhole or a claw trap aching to act on its springs. I hope in the same futility as everyone ever has, that the overwhelming uncertainty and the unfortunate certainty of the mortality of those you love is alien to all those who love someone, and hopefully someone(s).

 

Ashley Simmons is a soon to be graduating from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with an English Major. Ashley has aspirations of going to graduate school and getting a phd in Literary Studies.

Read more by Ashley:

Moving