inside you, the sun feels nothing like
apricot juice dripping like blood down my wrists
at the breakfast table, regardless
of your cigarette graveyard stuffed
into a hollowed Nutella jar on the balcony, despite
your smell of stale piss split
only by pink morning mass bells
chanting wordless hymns to the sleeping city like
the rising sun worshiping shadows
onto the cobblestones, lime-sticky sugar,
red nail polish, my tongue forced backward by
your language, your dazzling midnight unable
to permeate my lightheaded daze, white days
of sun-slain concrete juxtaposed against European caffeine,
burning, burning; I still ache.
Rebecca Orten is a seventeen-year-old student from Vermont. Her work has been previously recognized in the Eunoia Review, Feed Magazine, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Bennington Young Writers Awards. She likes dinosaur stickers and magnolia trees.