Adolescence

The flavor of lemons--
Your mouth was fragrant with sour sweetness
Under the stars, we danced from drunkenness
We pretended love as I twirled in your arms
before vomiting in the bushes.

This was our youth,
dancing from sadness, from the inevitability
of all it ending.
But I did love you.

You brushed the hair from eyes
and kissed each eyelid like
they were fragile moths.

Translucence--
For years I wanted my skin to look that way
Pearl-like, glimmering
the color of a cooing dove

But you were in love with caramel
The color, the taste on your tongue

Our bodies swayed, gleaming
with invisible perspiration.
Truth eluded us.
We only knew the meaning of the physical
The flavor of tears
The flavor of forgetting

Beauty enveloped us.
I was not beautiful.
I was malleable to your touch.
I became whatever you wanted me to be.
I had no plans for selfhood

Just danced in present tense
past the lonely doubts
past the slowly ticking moments
without ever knowing that it had all ended.

-Jennifer Santos Madriaga