I wasn’t thinking about you when I came, bucking and swooning and shuddering like someone had just walked over my grave. I was thinking about the random detached feet that wash up on beaches sometimes, and how some of them are still inside shoes, like sea creatures in weird morbid shells. I was thinking about buses and how they never arrive on time when you’re waiting in the rain and the queue’s getting longer and longer but then suddenly, sheepishly, three of them will turn up in one go and it’s like, take your pick. And you know the way girls always go to the bathroom in threes? I was thinking of that too. 

(I hope that’s okay.)

There’s a way you taste that reminds me of motor oil. 

When you slide in and out of me all slick and greasy I sometimes think of a piston and I want to make chugga-chugga steam train noises but that would totally kill the mood, wouldn’t it?

I dunno. I just think we ought to keep a sense of humour about the whole thing; a kind of bemused childishness while we do the deed. It must look absurd from an outside perspective: you on top of me on top of you like the meerkats we saw at the zoo. 

I love it when we share bodies, but I think, if you don’t mind, I’m keeping my mind just for me.

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Lesley Warren (She/her)
Lesley Warren lives for language. Her poetry and prose encompass themes of identity, “otherness,” and mental health, based on her own experiences of living in a foreign country as a mixed-race person. Her work has featured in a range of online and print publications, including the anthologies of the Frankfurt Creative Writing Group.