One Night, Again
By Ella Ford
I.
When I finally kissed you again, my nose started bleeding and while trying to dry the blood, I
looked at you through the mirror, and asked you if it was a sign. I don’t think you heard me. And
even if you did, you just kept kissing my neck and I bent my head so you could.
II.
You can meet me in the dugout, the cracked crater in between
your ribs and delicate disregard where I’ll carve my
name in the valley of the crest of your neck with
my fingertips.
Meet me in the ravine, the wide golden hull of my side.
Skim your hands down my landscape. So obscene,
you grab onto me with your fervid palms, pull my muscle
from its hide, like you haven’t eaten all day.
III.
You’ve rolled away from me now. Your smooth bare back to me and I’m looking at how your
shoulder blades look like they’re trying to escape from your skin. They press outward like
pantyhose over someone’s face or wet clothes draped on a body. Even so, I want to press my
hand between the blades to see how much space you still hold for me. I’d like to smush up
behind you so hard I just might melt into you like ice cream on the roadside, like lovers for the
first time. But it’s no use. Your back isn’t begging me to join the bones within and your spine is
cinched from side to side. No room for my hand or place to simmer into you. So I lay here for an
hour or two and watch your beautiful shoulder blades taunt me like our love isn’t futile.
Ella Ford is a Sophomore student here at UNC and is from Greensboro, NC. She is studying English and Communication and is extremely passionate about poetry.