by Katherine Hoerth
(04/21/10)

She hates the way I lay
before him -- the pretty pretty orchid
waiting to be plucked
from the earth -- carried
away and placed in some tiny jar
to rot. She hates

how I'm inanimate
without him -- like a subject
without her predicate. She hates

me because I don't
throw him to the ground
grab my destiny
in my hands.
Instead I wait for him to give
it to me.

I'm a slave to his pleasure
she thinks. She scoffs
when his lips touch mine,
and when he reaches deep
inside of me. When his tongue
passes through my hot lips, she rolls
her shadowed eyes. She hates

when I wrap my arms around his horizontal
body -- when I run my hands
through his hair. She hates

the feeling I get when he whispers
to me in my ear -- the warmth between
us -- she tells me its just sex and that I'm nothing --

just his cheaply bought whore.
But when I'm feeling his breath
steaming on my neck -- I don't hear her. I close
my eyes so I don't see her.
She still watches me as I wait
for him to reach just a little further --
when he finally touches -- with one motion --
She looks away.

She doesn't see my eyelids
wrinkle, my body shiver. No,
she can't watch because by now
its too late. I'm already his and my shadow
disappears somewhere into the moonlight.

I don't see her again until long after
he's kissed my forehead and held me
into the morning's virgin hours.

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