The Abandoned Heart Still Lusts
by Livy Poulin
i am still awake and i am writing. bedroom curtains drawn to keep the dark out. i can only start my stories in the middle.
i’m heartsick with a lonely fever. i touch myself to the thought of my grocery list, and my pleasure dances out in front of me, like the silver satin rising from a cigarette’s tip. i grasp at it, this untouchable, beautiful thing that can’t be held.
when i was a girl, i learned how to become a shadow. crept along splinter-ready floorboards and found that’s where the truth hides until its safe to come out, once the yelling stops. there’s a version of me that never left that place. sometimes i picture her sitting next to me on the couch. we watch tv together, her blonde legs folded like hairpins, and she sees that it worked out for us. not in the way she’d imagined - better. her dad eventually stops showing up to the McDonald’s parking lot pick-ups, eventually stops sending books in the mail. we spend our life trying to write about him.
to write about him is to remember the pack a day smell of the plaid covered couch. the five o’clock shadow scraping against my skin as he kisses me goodnight. the quilted pillowcases with the pink and purple flowers. the shape of silence. it filled the gaps between my stepmother’s rage.
i got to know my worth like a favorite bedtime story. let it sink into my dream state. dawn arrived and he was gone and i chased the unworthy feeling just to remember him by. i dug my nails, i clung, begged, and burned. the story never changed.
that’s how i found myself chasing after someone who called me a whore to his friends. whispered it in my ear while i was asleep at 2 am. made me fuck him even when i said i didn’t want to. it explains why i fucked everytime i didn’t want to. why i closed my eyes and pictured tits and pussy in my mouth to get myself to come. i get off to the fantasy of softness. i imagine thighs twisted around me, recalling how it feels to be whole.
if i build myself a cabin in the woods, just like he did - disappear. get high every day, just like he did. don’t tell anyone. keep many secrets. follow guilt like the last lit lantern in the windowsill under a new moon sky - i’ll find him there. i will. but i don’t look for him anymore. i swim through myself to her. until i am raw. until all that’s left of me is ribcage holding girl. the abandoned heart still lusts, after all.
Livy Poulin (she/her) is a writer and artist who enjoys playing in a range of mediums. Originally from Maine, Livy now resides in Los Angeles with her cat, where she lives her best creative, queer life.