I remember I couldn’t reach my pants

They were far away in the night

My back hurt from lying on the ground

under your weight; you the boy

who fed me until I was drunk;

the liquor dripping from my mouth.

 

No emotion in your eyes, and a smirking mouth

as you tore off my thin cotton pants.

I convinced myself you were just drunk,

but you were perfectly sober that night.

In the distance I could hear a girl and a boy

laughing, but I couldn’t yell or get up from the ground.

 

Like a spider, you spun your web on the ground

around me. Your sharp teeth pricked my mouth

as I looked up at the sky and wondered if a boy

would ever ask me before he pulled off my pants,

or would talk to me during sunlight, not just night

like you did. You see, I was drunk

 

off of the idea of you at the beginning. Drunk

off of the stars when you pushed me to the ground.

You held my small hands in yours that night

and kissed me like your name was written on my mouth.

I was your property: my shirt, my bra, my pants...

and the girl belonged to the boy.

 

Your name I have replaced with ‘boy’

because when I see or hear it I feel drunk

again. Like that night when I lost my favorite pants;

stumbling around, looking for them on the ground,

wiping your taste off my mouth

as I shivered in the October night.

 

You were finished with me after that night

and found another girl, but I couldn’t look at another boy.

After you, I couldn’t fathom kissing another mouth.

You filled my nightmares. Coffee I had never drunk

left stains from the beans that I ground

up to keep me awake. So I wouldn’t dream of you taking off...my pants

 

only now removed when my mouth says yes at day and night.

His pants are only removed when I say yes, the boy,

who when I was drunk, took me home after lifting me off the ground.