MIRROR
francesca kritikos
When you left me alone in the hotel room, I ate peanut butter out of a half-empty jar I found in a cupboard, getting it stuck under my acrylic nails. I was asleep, peaceful, when you came back. You fucked me for a long time, but you were so drunk. I wrote words into your back like my grandmother used to do to help me sleep, singing a Greek nursery rhyme about how churches’ crosses cut open a hole in the sky that angels pour out of. It’s a trick I learned to console men, the only thing that always works.
In the morning you woke up slow, so slow it tormented me. It was a sunny September day, beautiful. I’d just turned 26, but you never gave me a gift, reminding me of what we were and what we weren’t.
On the drive up, you picked the music. You know that I am weak / and you are free to take me downstairs. You told me that, years ago, your ex-girlfriend had falsely accused you of raping her, and you planned on ending it all, but then she took it back. Your hand was on my bare thigh, and I traced letters into it, spelling something out in a language I didn’t know.
On Sunday you took me back to my apartment in the city. You plucked my dark long hair out of your car before driving home. The tendrils spiraled through the air and onto the street. I phoned my mother and told her lies.
Remember when you yelled at me for calling myself a whore?
It was the only time I saw you turn away from a mirror.
francesca kritikos is the editor in chief of @sarka.publishing and the author of the poetry collection EXERCISE IN DESIRE from @va_press. her collection of poetry and prose, SWEET BLOODY SALTY CLEAN, is forthcoming from @feral.dove later in 2023.