Leigh Cuen is a young poet and journalist from California, currently living by the Mediterranean Sea. Her writings have been published by Al Jazeera English, The Jerusalem Post, World Literature Today and many others.
The girl who followed me onto 6th Avenue Heart Ache
In San Francisco
Never saw it coming.
(We rode the bus all the way
to the inner Mission,
past the crest of Castro’s hills
where the city twinkled beneath us like a landscape of fallen stars.
We wandered astray
tumbled
deep into the earth).
She knew too little of romance, found Coldplay ‘somewhat over the top’
but still let me play those sad songs
while we kissed.
The girl with pink and purple fantasies
closed doors in my face
portals shrank
windows broke open
tears flooded the hall.
I liked to think I was the elixir
that made her body swell
It was I who licked her tenderly
with the sweet decadence of frosting
made her weep for the past
like the familiar scent of a grandmother’s cake
served with warm tea on a rainy day.
We consumed each other all night
and in the morning
the taste of madness
still lingered on our lips.