INTERIOR

by Bea Keeler

‘Kiss me,’ you said,
peach schnapps and stolen cigar on your breath
with the youthfulness of a growing breast.
I wanted to,
fresh lips and skin I’d never touched
but have always known. They were like my own.
Your hair in my mouth as I discovered
your neck, how my palm cupped your chest,
the smell of innocence and sweat.
My hand slid past your waist,
past your hips into a space that was
so familiar yet so foreign. Terrified of doing it wrong,
I held the air in my lungs and felt your
warm exhale, your warm interior.
You liked it,
I could feel it in the way you moved, so I
started to move with you too and before I knew it,
we were symmetry. The fear of being inadequate, the
first time with my fingers inside a woman, ceased to
exist when I kissed those lips like you asked me to.
I was the same person after we had sex.
I was the person I had always been, but I knew
what it was to love a girl.
‘Kiss me,’ you said,
and so I did. Again, and again, and again.


Interior by Bea Keeler is a Blasted Tree original poem