In a sea of fallen leaves,
we found an abandoned
something or other
which left behind
a block of concrete
embedded in the dirt
where maybe one day long ago
children drew hopscotch grids
and threw stones.
To us it was an island among leaves,
a sanctuary that protected us
from all those crinkling golden wrappers.
We settled on our grey concrete island,
with hopes that our tight jeans
weren’t squeezing our bodies
into odd, lumpy contortions
though the boys didn’t seem to care if they were,
because they were long-limbed
tanned boys,
farm boys who knew what real pain
and hunger felt like,
who knew real, crippling desire.
Using instinct, they dug their fingers
into our tiny, flowery wrists,
they moaned into our ears
like the trees moaned
when the wind stripped them of color.
The boys pressed their pink lips
against our faces,
and they tasted our sweat
with the tips of their tongues
they left slimy wet paths
where their kisses had been,
moving snail-like down the length of our necks.
They groped
mindlessly,
mostly groping at nothing,
mostly bunching our clothes into wads
and gathering fistfuls of flesh.
Requests became demands
in times like these,
and the gasps are so loud
they seem to travel for miles,
but really,
they are swallowed by the whispers in the leaves,
and no one hears them strip you of your color.
There was a hospital bed in the living room
where she died a spectacle
naming people
we didn’t remember
and mixing memories
with current events
her hands shaky weak
and her unclipped nails
clicking
like the heels
she used to wear
on the metal skin
of the bedrail
she etched music
with the sharp points
of plump cherry red
polish,
we’d painted her
to look familiar
and less sick to us,
less grey
when she wasn’t
opaque
like prescription bottles,
when her breath wasn’t alkaline
with dosage,
we’d sit her up
and brush her hair
out of her head,
in with the sheets
that curled around her
like yesterday’s
yellow newspaper.
Rachelle Shepherd is a student and aspiring writer living in southern Indiana. She has published with 365 tomorrows and she keeps a blog at http://mechanical-pencil-
–Art by Natalia Drepina