You Taught Me to Write About Hands as More than What They Can Take From Me

Rachel Tanner

I was tired three hours ago
before you made me cum but
now I’m lying next to you,
my body electric and buzzing
while you snore, grind your
teeth in a drunken, heavy sleep.

I put a toothbrush in your guest bathroom.
I changed the thermostat without
asking first.

Now: your breath braced on
my neck just as your hands steadied
lower on me earlier. I can smell the
whiskey, taste the
happy.

I am almost home.

Rachel Tanner is a queer, disabled writer from Alabama whose work has recently appeared in Memoir Mixtapes, Blanket Sea, The Cabinet of Heed, and elsewhere. She tweets @rickit.