A testament to a love story made up in my head

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it’s always on the tip of the tongue 
little wiggling baby teeth. 
that spot in the room where the light catches its own wavelengths 

watching you through the curio cabinet mirror is ballet. the progression of a fever. 
what a show the china we will never use gets to see. 

thrown blankets over chairs get to feel the way your fingers frisk its fabric with futile intention. 

pictures on the wall remember how shaky your hands were putting them up. 
illusory pressure—unabashed intention. 

stoned on your couch, lessons in stitching, engravings, and gravity. 
I was so intentional. 

grappling with Sylvia to not devour the 
Head 
and Nabokov’s Vera to lick the backs of your stamps. 

love and other types of fruit.  
found deep in the pockets of well-worn cardigans. things people would akin a crow’s odd gifts to —
string, buttons, small animal bones, bewildered keys, shiny pieces of foil, specs of shimmering light. 
opals in an afterlife. 
something only you have brought me. 

will my freckles roll onto yours, like how you paint walls with woven polyester? 
the way it’s embedded in your skin at times. 
it rolls off my tongue, a dog drooling over its dinner plate, waiting for the kibble to plink. 
I am audible. I will not quiet down. 
Bright. Pink. Pop. 

you ripen me like cherries in early July, you knot my stems. Find it easier to keep me like that. Don’t eat
the pit. 
save it for the altar. 
a boy I met a while ago, briefly, took me to a local swimming hole and left teeth marks on my legs. I now
have tangible evidence that you exist. written briefly into my skin. deep recessions, notches that only his mouth could provide. 

rotting fruit gathers flies.
I am forever fresh, clear American strawberries for you, plucked straight from the vine. not a spot of green in sight. 

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Lin Elizabeth is a 25-year-old writing degree dropout turned stripper turned small canary princess. Hidden in the deep sinewy belly of Arkansas’ River Valley, she writes about sex work, trauma, addiction, sobriety, and deep mother wounds. Her poems have appeared in Applause Magazine, Hypertrophic Press, Sinkhole Quarterly, the Idle Class magazine, and Goats Milk Mag.

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