Ben Kline
The Last Condom
From the steam, my second term Obama era boyfriend claimed showers are for lovers, baths for the lonely. I held up the last condom from the box, a wafer for caution we forsook after bottom shelf libations. Decades have grifted my bones, calcifying what all the uncles dying taught me, their ash and dust. Neither of us could afford Truvada. A meteor of unasked questions tore the wrapper, ignoring its expiration date, the mylar destined for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with other trash he refused to name, swirling Ivory in his armpits twice, insisting he was almost finished, and we were fine, we were making good choices, the condom expanding with my lust and time refusing to snap back from ash and dust. My patella clicked when I removed my jeans and stepped in, reaching around him for the soap, the latex squeaking in his hand. The steam softened us inside out. Neither of us could afford an apartment with a bathtub. Frustration I remove my N95 on the subway, inhaling pot and urine and people being people again. We weren’t the same, those two years. Our breath and musk, sparks in this hot metal box remind us when I show you where to enter, to lick my neck and teeth and yank my tongue at the root. You can’t hurt me. You have my permission to fill my mouth with smoke and piss on my thigh, my sandaled feet, soft with loneliness, your hands dredging crevices salted by those same years. Your index slipping inside, I don’t last to Columbus Circle, stumbling up stairs into an alley, caution a broken strap, bricks against my back. I said, Yes you can't hurt me. You have my permission. |