Free Entry, Week Eleven

Sneezing with Your Eyes Open

This isn’t like the movies, I said, balling

my fists so tight each knuckle cracked

under the pressure, pressing the prints of

an antique deep into my left palm. I thought

 you’d plead, maybe even cry. But you just stood,

cross-armed and shirtless, bucking

your ego against mine— and for the first

time I studied the very body I tried

to claim for the rest of forever: chesti’s,

those tangled shrubs of hair circling

around your man nipples, wiry-black and

unpredictable as the odd pubes patched

in the small of your back; beady eyes,

calcium stained teeth, skin leopard with

freckles and skin tags, tagging along with

their flailing heads, all splattered on top of

a pasty frame; and what with the So-Cal swoop,

blonde and Hollywood; legs thick like

the trunks of trees and as easily flaky. Man thighs

really bother me, I said, while using my pointer

fingers as wiper blades, and still clasping the ring

in a death grip, wishing, instead, it were you in

a choke hold, play-doh mushed into mold, molding

into the very nothing you are. At this, I handed

over the only piece of equipment we ever (kind of)

shared, and then laughed along with the rustling

of Fall leaves—how boring and colorless, how artless,

your life; must be like sneezing with your eyes open:

impossible to do without popping out sockets or making

an ugly crink in your nose. I smile a wave, turn

for new direction, taking one last mental picture of

you: just face, lost in a wrinkle of regret.