Alabama Poets
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The Frog
It isn’t the summer day or the slight breeze swishing my hair across my neck that I remember. Just the tongue sliding, sticky, up my cheek-- how it, days before, had slipped between my teeth in the abandoned art studio on campus, how I’d shut my eyes against it, how I’d pretended this wasn’t just a slimy mistake-- just the way I knew, after that tongue, unasked for and unwanted, marked my face with spit-- this would be the last time I let a boy kiss me, knowing I did not want him. The Anteater I am not an anteater expert. I don’t know if they really suck up ants like a vacuum, but that’s what they taught me in school, so that’s what I believe. What they didn’t teach me was how it feels to be sucked dry, to be a mound of brown ants at the nose of an anteater, to be kissed so hard it makes a pop against my neck, to be tugged sore, to carry a purple hickey like a flashing siren, blaring owned, owned, owned! What did this boy think was buried beneath my skin? Were you a fleshy prospector, mining for the light tucked just under these white rocks, my clean, young bones? The Bulldog swearing I like it swearing that all women like it you coat my lips in slobber and smile. even in the morning with a sleep-coated tongue with sour breath sour teeth sour slobber sour, sour— you close your mouth over mine start your steady grumble like it’s that good already. I try to remember how charming I find your wrinkled thinking brow your sweet voice under this kiss. I try to remember that I think this could be love but even thinking is hard to do in this kiss I can’t escape. even if I initiate you find a way to make it yours to drown me in your leaking tongue. you remind me how free it feels to breathe. 
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