Charlie M2 Bellett
Candles For Our Birth As One
We wear each other like traded bras and spit,
swapping swigs of sleep in the same tangled bedsheets,
starving off the same skipped breakfast.
You strike the match with my hand,
and I press the wick to flame with yours.
See the lights flickering against our eyes
dancing like childhood,
sweating wax like sin.
Your room is a birthday cake for the ritual
of teen sex and first times.
But it really isn’t for the guys, men,
boys, or whatever they want to be called.
It’s about us.
Our first time as one is about the purity of sex.
Tufts of dandelion brushing atop the breeze,
not when I’m ripped like fabric
with a scream.
It’s your hand that I undo my jeans with,
maybe it’s my legs folding underneath you.
Charlie M2 Bellett (he/him), is a writer and artist based out of Waihōpai. His work can be found in the wind's whistles, and where the sunlight freckles between treetop canopies.