I think you taste like rat poison when we kiss. No, I don’t know what that tastes like. Save your quick quips. You’re like radish and cigarette, or maybe you’re all Fernet, a bitter aperitif. You wear a jacket like a tattered book sleeve, patches over denim, cologne mixed with rain and mold, a snug fit. You aren’t dirty, but you look lived in. Your eyes are in their thirties. You told me you are twenty eight.

You make a drink in the kitchen while I unzip my boots. We talked about not doing this again. But here is this chair that you tossed me over last time, exposed ass in the air. And here are my naked legs, bare feet against your cold floor, a rash of goosebumps running up my thighs. The rain is loud against the window. My hair is wet from when we spilled out of the cab to your front door.

“Here you go,” you say handing me whiskey I didn’t ask for. I’m wondering when you’re going to take your jacket off. You stand over me, twist my hair in your hands and lean in. You open your mouth on mine, slip your drink in. Your mouth whiskey is still cold but it warms my ears, makes the texture of your tongue present against mine. I think of an octopus tentacle as we kiss. I know where you’ll press into me next.

Neither of us wants what is beyond this. Maybe that’s what makes me give into it. You’re cool confidence will be a stutter again, in the morning when I leave. I wish I could whisper, we’re in this together. I’m not falling in love with you either. But you like having power over me. You think I’m obsessed. I’m gonna slip out in the morning and figure out who’s next too.

You have me how you want me. I give you what I feel like, just my body, since there’s enough whiskey for both of us. When I come I think about breakfast by myself in the morning, and a whole day on my couch, under a blanket. When you come I think about leaving, but I stay, it’s the least I can do. I think you need this more than I do, we just don’t know it yet.