snow fever

by Venus Anani

The pocket sappho that I bought two summers ago sits in a storage bin (slightly damp. almost five hundred miles away surrounded by paper movie posters, my possibly molding bong and the pink duvet I haven't washed in 3 months).

I tell myself that this is not carelessness.

I'm not casting out the teachings of the great lady

I am not forsaking her love

I remember the intricate aches of touching and being touched. grabbing hold of flushed thighs. licking tugging grazing sweating if not, then wanting and hiding and clawing.

this is not blasphemy—

it is protection

to be truthful is to be foolish and I long for a sort of survival that isn't docile

I want to be without my knuckles grinding into my heart want to fuck without my throat closing

i shouldn’t need the touching shouldn't plead for scratches or tears but this body

is a fast trap

a hound seeking unfiltered tenderness it will grab hold of anything rancid, anything rotten as long as it's warm.

i would suck down a thousand apple seeds if it meant the cyanide would hold me as i slept.

i keep expecting my veins to freeze over and cut themselves from my arms.

believe me i understand.

there is no creation that hungers for wintertime not even my arteries want to keep close anymore.

i can’t remember if she wrote about this anomaly.

if there are pages gushing about girls with teeth for fingernails and gaping mouths at their palms i want to read all of them.

i wonder where the flowers come from.

i wonder if our hands mean to bruise when we touch each other.

sweet, sweet poetess i am sorry for trying to forget.

i am still learning that affection

doesn’t scald like misery does.

forgive me, but if i must give myself to something,

i pray that it burns.

Venus Anani is 19 years old and from Montgomery County, Maryland, and Accra, Ghana. They love writing in all forms, especially poetry. Venus uses writing to make sense of their pains and identity.

Illustration by Marley Reedy