Insecurity to the Point of Not Being Able to Fantasize About Sex but Only the Uncomfortable Morning After (Because for Some Cruel Reason in This Fantasy They Wanted to Stay)

An elbow seems like a place hair
shouldn’t grow. Yes this is exactly
how I want to introduce myself to you
as we wake up mildly hungover & mostly
clothed. The doodles you make on that napkin
won’t save you, & neither will portraits
of dogs smoking pipes. Nothing will
save you from dying in the one way
you specifically don’t want to. It’s like
gravity or magnets or something else
I’ll lie about actually understanding
as I wonder what my tongue smells like
while quickly filling these mugs with coffee
over the halo of detritus ringing their interior.
You don’t lean in for a hug, which, fine,
hugs make my teeth hurt anyway, intimacy
makes my butt itch, & this coffee is weak,
I know that, it doesn’t always happen,
but you look at me as if to say weak coffee
is like being poorly fingered & I respond
but my hands are small, or is it all technique?
& your eyes say well see you really just
don’t want to have small hands
but this is all chemistry, water divided by
tablespoons or something, I don’t always
make coffee this diluted & now the hair
on my elbow is itching & I don’t know why
I was so critical about doodles earlier & my tongue
smells like cigarettes cause I smoke cigarettes
& my stomach hurts cause I hate owls probably
considering most horrible things are nonlinear
so I say if I’ve got one thing going for me
at least I’ve missed most funerals, relatively
& you tell me this is very weak coffee
which yeah okay I GET IT but we can still watch videos
of geese chasing down children or a documentary
about castles that are probably haunted because
the caffeine is urging me to roll myself up in blankets
& devour bags of questionably flavored snacks like a soft beast
before you notice the damp clothes spilling out of the drying machine
& I’d really just like to eat chips
& watch reality TV about ghosts with you.

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Nicholas Alti writes with and about trigeminal neuralgia, neuroatypicality, unknowable nebulae, and the art/act of strangeness. He’s an assistant editor for fiction and poetry at The Black Warrior Review. There’s more of him at KAIROS, Hypertrophic Press, The Hunger Journal, Pretty Owl Poetry, and elsewhere.

Photo: Christian Joudrey