A small tear appears in my jeans where my thighs rub together
but I still slip them on, button up
cause once you slid your hands over them,
dug your thumb into the small of my back.
Every touch is woven into their threads, every
finger lingers.
God damn.
How have you been?
I want to ask but instead I stare at a picture on Instagram,
jam my fist into my mouth to
keep myself from typing out “I might have
loved you once but now I just remember it.”
Maybe you’d say back, “oh don’t kid yourself.
No love looks like running a hand
over your ass for two minutes”
Probably, you’re right. But haven’t you
questioned what it would’ve been like?
Replanting the redwood evening over and over is my
specialty. I’ve run it so many
times that now the smoke and fog are clogging my pores.
Unreal as it is, I still know what it’s like to press my hands to your chest.
Volcanic as it is, I still dream you
willing and me, unhinged. Every
xeroxed frame is a little different.
Yoked into this story is the
zipper and how you never got around to unzipping it.

Sage Curtis lives in a little yellow house in the Bay Area with her partner and pup, Panther. Her chapbook, Trashcan Funeral, was recently released with dancing girl press. Her work has been published in Vinyl, Glass Poetry, The Normal School, Juked, burntdistrict, and more. She earned her MFA from University of San Francisco and was named a Litquake Writer on the Verge in 2017.