if i listen carefully i hear my own laughter as you shove an orange whole into your mouth — we are fifteen and spring is just starting, my fingers on your camera, you laughing on the floor. your dad found the photos eventually, said we were doing drugs — if i listen carefully i hear us doing drugs, same place, different date. your pants, unbuttoned around my waist, your medication ground up in liquor, bare floors under cold feet, blood dripping from ankles we shaved while high. if i think hard, i think now, i smell decay, the two of us, wilting, unpressed, flowered overpowering: you think my scars look cool, i think i want you, but never when i'm sober. we share a bed, kiss on the mouth, i confuse resurrection and betrayal. i make you cover every picture of jesus up, pretend god can no longer see us — if i listen carefully i taste you licking rigor mortis off my tongue, i taste rot, i taste it sucked away. i taste us embalmed into adults that haven’t spoken in a year, still eat oranges the way you taught me to, still fear your dad uncovering his saviour. do you think jesus watched from those paintings, still, ashamed he had chosen martyrdom over this? do you think he regretted rising from his grave, regretted letting angels roll away that stone, missed being a body that ripened in that darkness, missed the joy of growing bad to eat?
Marta Špoljar is an assistant editor at The Wondrous Real Magazine, with works seen in Pollux Journal, Not Deer Magazine and Journal of Erato. Words she cannot put into poetry she tweets from @shhhhhpoljar.