someone else's boyfriend
someone else’s boyfriend
You drive my car to this dead-end street in front of an abandoned suitcase factory. The backseat cramps around our bodies. I refuse to take off my sneakers, so we zip up our jeans and fall against the trunk. You’re backlit, silver lining glowing by the almost full moon and I forget that earlier you refused to kiss me as the only mercy to her.
I don’t ask you about her. You tell me anyway. How you asked her to be your girlfriend twice before she gave in. You ask me if it’s our island that’s hanging from my neck while your fingers trace the molded metal coasts, shore skin and blood waves indicating that coming back is the worst love and the only kindness I understand. You let me drink Heineken alone because you’re sober now; it’s this new thing you’re trying. I make you buy me another, refilling your softest words’ failure to puncture my heart deep enough to stain your fingers.
It still manages to burst like sea salted veins in an ocean far too timid to make me forget you. Or the last girlfriend, the one you insisted looked like me. Back when you cooked baked potatoes for hungry college girls in their cramped apartments. Back when you feed and starved my lap with your head.
The moon is beautiful enough to convince me that the warmth and length of our hugs is comparable. Again, you plate me in gold like after I yelled to go aggravate your girlfriend instead. We fuck and it’s mediocre and we get caught halfway by a cop who just tells us we can’t be there. We drive to that 24-hour BBQ place in front of the airport.
The most vivid memory of your body is me feeding you. Your eyes consuming that tostón de pana with a fraction of the want I hope you give her because it doesn't scratch what you’ve given me. It’s all the thanks I can muster after you’ve given me and her and even yourself under this almost full moon on almost Christmas in this almost country a piece of anything. That’s all there is to give here. Her. A thumbprint, a bruised thigh, a wink and three eyelashes to someone who at one point smelled of frying oil and sea foam under the almost full moon we call home.
•
“Es cierto que las boricuas son las más divertidas?”
but of course
that’s all we do on the
aihland
drink lukewarm rum out of coconuts
that I suction onto my breasts
to let you rip off
& drink
the liquor sweating, glowing
off my sun kissed skin,
a non-toxic sunblock
to protect your stomach lining from my
espaicy latin faier
and the Caribbean sun I swallowed at birth
just to spit dawn and rainbows down your gullet.
coffee, cane, and cunts
si,si,si,
your three course meal exported in
a plundered gold platter.
Laura Andrea (she/her) is a cuir, boricua fiction writer and poet from Carolina, Puerto Rico. She’s currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Texas at El Paso. You can follow her day to day online @lauranlora.