you talk about ***
like it is tasteful,
your fingers ghosting the inside of my thighs
like it is pure,
but it is not.

you leave a trail of gunpowder,
hide explosives in the crevices of my skin,
and there is nothing tasteful
in the hunger with which you do so,
like you are both in a rush to bruise my neck
and get rid of me after.

there is nothing tasteful about the noises i make,
loud and empty to fill up this loveless space.
do not confuse these sounds
with approval;
with every ****** of your hips,
i am further disjointed from reality.
is that really me, the girl moaning like she is made of lust?

perhaps that noise,
your nails digging into my back,
my knuckles turning white as i hold onto your bed frame,
are the only things keeping me grounded

because i try not to get lost in your kisses
when you only kiss me as a prelude
to ******* me,
and i try to forget that there is a timer
on my free range of your body

still, i let you hold me down,
and i let you kiss me
but there is nothing tasteful about the way you look at me once you are done

i am not ****
but your eyes turn lazy and glaze over me
before moving onto more important things,
and there is
nothing tasteful about the way you strip my confidence

you think i am your masterpiece,
but this is a violent crime against my heart;
your *** is empty
and i don't want it anymore.

most of the time i'm sick to my stomach
with the thought that you'd be better off without me;

poison love,
how you've invaded my body
and marked the inside of its skin,
the space between my organs,
the blood running through me

it has started to paralyze me,
poison love,
but there is an edge to that toxicity
that i am continuously falling for

or is it you i am loving?
the line separating the two has begun to blur
because your hands on me
have become synonymous with hurt

and i love it
but still i am scared you will leave me;
poison love, i know i am simple
i am bland and unlovable
but i need you to breathe

i need you

most of the time i'm sick to my stomach
with the thought that you'd be better off without me;
maybe that's exactly the kind of thought i need
to stop feeling so sick.

your scents make you

like a sweater laden with the aroma baked cookies,
and the faint hint of your friend's cologne
it is a comfort, hanging on your shoulders

or a sweet girl's perfume
that smells of chamomile and honey
her naive innocence
it is rich, the way it invades your nose

the boy you love
who smells like warmth if it could be bottled up
sweet and sour at the same time,
some drugstore body spray he uses
and yet it reminds you of evenings spent with him,
clinging onto your clothes,
or when some stranger wearing it walks past

even your own smell
beneath this manufactured, manicured
version of you,
is not lost on his skin
or his bedsheets

like the vanilla you used to lather on your skin,
mature and yet demure in its subtle sweetness;
still, your skin tasted of sweat and lust and
you

tell me, what do you smell like?
the clothes that sit in a laundry basket
for a few days,
the candle that burns in your room

i don't know

ask your friends;
they tell you it's a spicy scent;
a medical undertone;
it doesn't even stand out;

here you are,
defining the tang of a boy’s sweat
and what does yours mean to anyone?
nothings, perhaps

and it doesn’t sit well with you;
so you stand in aisles of perfume,
a crowded, over-priced store,
deciding who you want to be

the comforting cookies,
the innocent cup of tea,
it doesn’t even matter
you buy the prettiest bottle,
in lotions, in perfumes, in shower gels
a signature smell, you tell yourself,
maybe will make you make sense

you drench your skin in it for weeks
but you lose the lotion,
you forget to spray the perfume on in the morning,
run out and can’t find the same scent anymore

you borrow your beautiful friend’s perfume for a day
and it reminds you of her
the soft angles of her smile, her mermaid hair
you feel pretty

then it wears off when you get home
and you’re left with
medical, spicy nothing; what does that even mean?

what does it mean
to not know what your own body smells like?
to only have others' smells cling to you
is both a privilege and a hindrance

i am marked by lovers and friends
i have patches of skin that smell like certain boys
but does that not make the skin theirs?

your scent makes you, but i don’t have one.

can i chalk up my prudish ways to a stifling, arab upbringing?
one where my mother would often comment on the bra strap showing beneath my shirt,
or my dealings with a boy in public;
where *** is never isolated from marriage

i don't care about *** and marriage,
*** before marriage,
but perhaps it is difficult to scrub my mind clear of that kind of thinking

conservative, we called it;
more than anything, it suffocated me

but perhaps i could chalk it up to the first boy
whom i gave the privilege of proving my mother wrong;
proving that *** and love were not mutually exclusive;
perhaps i could blame the boy who abused this privilege,
kissed and touched me of his own accord,
and scarred my appetite for anything that intimate

perhaps he is just an overeager boy, me a shy girl

but here i am,
incapable of kissing another without shaky hands,
the feeling that it is distinctly not right to be here
kissing someone,
despite how much i want to

so who’s to take the blame?

you fell in love first with the curvature of my hips.

your love started at the base of my spine,
where skin and bone and all that was in between
were imbued with lust;
hips that moved of their own accord
against your own,
hips that jumped at every touch,
however rough or delicate,
and drank in your hands

then your love manifested in the indent of my waist,
fragile and so breakable with your sturdy hands framing me,
steadying me through the frantic rut of our bodies.
next, it materialized in my collarbone, all over my chest
in deep kisses and in your mouth on me,
in the desperation as i pressed myself closer to you
and the sinful things your tongue did to me

and then you kissed me;
between my lips, in every crevice of my mouth,
your love had infiltrated my soul,
marking my insides
and i reveled in the pleasant hum of my body,
knowing this is what it was made for
and that you were all i wanted

it was not sobering enough to realize
that this is not where love was meant to go

your love, in fact, was meant to reside on the surface of my skin,
nowhere near my fragile heart;
i had not planned for the shocking warmth of it there,
or how quickly attached i’d grown to it

it transpired that you hadn’t planned this either,
that you weren’t ready for someone to take a hold of your love
and make a home out of it

now, the memory is on the forefront of my mind,
stuck in my throat mixed with hurt,
because still you kiss a path down my throat,
hold me and bruise my skin,
my heart;
my organs are cold now,
only ceasing to shiver when you touch me

but when you are talking to other girls,
or ignoring me,
the nipping at my heart is merciless
and i feel like i am being devoured alive

i fall in love with hickeys that litter my skin,
praying and hoping i see you once more
before they disappear
taking your love with them

perhaps this is not love,
for it hurts too much to be kindhearted,
soft love that i mistook it for

still, i look for it in your eyes every time
before you close them and kiss me hard.

months after i last saw you
i still remember wanting to kiss you,
finding my face inches away from yours
and swaying with indecision

i remember thinking you were the most beautiful boy to grace the earth,
to ever hold me close while i kissed him

it's been months since i last wanted to kiss you
with that desperate kind of need
but the residue of that feeling lives in my insides;
when i see your face, smiling and innocent,
i remember you were a delicate boy i wanted to kiss;
it is only a fraction of the feeling, but still it consumes me
just as it had before

how have you been?
are you doing better than you were when we last spoke?
our time spent together was sweet and naive in its innocence,
but not without its flaws;
i remember we alternated between wanting to hold each other,
and holding other people;
sometimes wanting nothing more than to be kissed,
other times begging for the distinct sharpness of a knife across our skin

still, i neglect the bad memories,
or rather embrace them for what they were;
you were a beautiful, broken boy
i may have fallen in love a bit too much with your frayed edges,
loved you more when you were worse for the wear,
but i loved you wholly for who you were

it still makes me feel warm thinking of your arms around my waist,
hand on my hip,
pulling me close,
of our silly chit chat well past midnight,
making my heart feel lighter;
these are beautiful and fragile memories that i don’t want to forget,
as much as you may have hurt me once upon a time

this love is dead,
but it is no longer soaked in pain and bitterness;
i am so much happier having had you in my life,
and having been the person to make you smile at some point
that will always be beautiful and wholesome,
no matter what happens in between.

i like being held by you,
head on your chest,
heartbeat echoing in my mind

i like being close to you,
enough to feel the rise and fall of your breathing,
or the smallest twitch in your stomach

i like your arms wrapped around me,
making me feel small
but safe in your hold;
i like it when you squeeze me tighter
like you're scared of letting go
or losing me

i like how warm you are,
how soft and pliant your body is against mine
like it is made to meld
just for me

i like when you trace patterns on my back,
nonchalantly run your fingers up and down my arm;
when you rest your head in the crook of my neck,
and the sensitive skin jumps at your touch

i like your hand on my hip,
on my waist,
under my shirt;
your skin belongs on mine,
and there is an exhilarating warmth
spreading through me at every touch

i like the way my skin begs to be touched,
grabbed, soothed,
triggered only by the heat radiating off you;
i like the way it jumps when you do touch it,
like a christmas wish fulfilled

i like anything that exists in the same space as us,
when there is no room left between our bodies,
like you are my lifeline and i am yours

and, to be honest,
i quite like you too.