Photography
Bart Scholliers
texting lies
to you
Don’t want to motherfuckingtalk about theweather.
want to curl up in your lap like a cat.
can I tell you that?
you say “so cold today, had to wear a sweater.”
i’m like,
“oh, you know, just thinking how I want my lips
to graze against your stubble.” Verbal slips—
See my phone light
up while i’m ruminating on the pleasures
of my supine body
coiled around your other, forty
days ago, you write, “i think we can’t be lovers”
(can’t imagine how you think we could be anything other, but)
you say, “we can still be friends”
Guess I shouldn’t mention then
the words that choke my throat,
the string on my finger that is the duct tape on my mouth—
Now that I can’t tell the truth
of all I’d like to do with you,
I just type: “it’s cold here too.”
Susannah Betts is a 21-year-old college senior at Wesleyan
University, finishing up a bachelor’s degree in physics,
while also serving as the fiction editor of the online literary
magazine, The Fem, and writing her own poetry and fiction.
She has previously been published in Vagabond City, Crab
Fat Literary Magazine, and the Greenblotter.