lipstick in the rain

You should watch out when I'm wearing bright lipstick.

I do it a lot, but still.

Lipstick says "I want you to think about my lips, but I'm not going to kiss you with them." That would mess it up. It's all about attention to my mouth. I want you looking at it while I'm talking and thinking about it, not just what's coming out of it but the shape, the soft curves of lips accentuated in bold red or hot pink, brighter than any other girl in the room.

Always my goal.

My lipstick says "If you kiss me with this, it's going to be messy. It's going to leave a mark." Sure, it washes off eventually, maybe with a little scrubbing. The faint hint of red there for a while after. You'll remember me when you look at your own mouth.

Is it a warning? Did I put it on just for you? I like leaving you wondering.

Comic Book Supervillain

I dress up like a character in a story. In your story. Iron my hair flat and paint my lips bright sticky sour-cherry red so that you will look at them and know that if you kiss them it will stain your mouth and everyone will know. I want everyone to know.

I play a supervillain so I don't have to show that I care.

And your girl, your prettysugarsweet girl who is not me, who is quite far from me really, who has fewer hands on her, fewer marks and scars, is guaranteed to make me feel like a bad-girl cliche swept into town to steal her man. Swaggering down city streets far from home in battered cowboy boots, wishing someone else would come distract me.

A few tried.

And so I can taste you still, taste your messy kisses that threaten to mess me up, feel the fence at my back and your hand on my leg and most of the time I like arms, shoulders, hips but with you it's the line of your neck and the way you hold your head that makes me think you'd be a good lover. A giving one but confident too. Your whispered "I'd fuck you senseless" makes me believe you, unlike most guys who say it. No, you mean it and it would be good. Delicious.

But I walk away feeling like I'm playing a character in a story, a story with too many twists and turns and yet filled with stock characters that people wouldn't even believe on a big screen. Maybe in a comic. Where I'd have to get what I deserve in the end, be defeated by the forces of goodness and watch you ride off into the sunset with your arms around her.

Well, I'll probably have to do that anyway.

crush

you are fucking lovely and seeing you sort of always makes my day, even though you are ten different kinds of trouble that I should steer very clear of. but now the taste of iced chai without milk and a little bit of raw sugar is, in my head, what you taste like, more than the ginger cocktail and pink champagne I was sipping the night you tried to kiss me and I had to stop you. or the burning tang of whiskey at a friend's party where the air was charged between us with remembering the last time and knowing that, having to one-up each other not by feigning indifference but by challenging our opinions, always opinions.

because you no more than I can't forget that night and that weird blend of cocky and vulnerable, aggressive and acerbic, laughing at everything except when you were deadly, deadly serious.

I didn't get enough of you for a real taste so my mouth stings with astringent tea instead of warm salty skin.

your hands, I can't even look at for long.

so I laugh and make jokes, crack wise and apologize for not being funny in a moment of silence that threatens to make the short walk feel more loaded than walking down Canal Street with my arms around you in the cold, stopping in the subway station riding the edge of a delicious wave of tension that I didn't want to break.

I dare you, your eyes say to me. Each little line around your eyes. Double dare you. I want to challenge you. You've seen a lot. But have you seen me?

(I rather needed that.)

Been a While

I want to be your one that got away.

I want to be the girl you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about and sweating, missing me so hard you can taste it, taste me on your tongue, and you roll over to the woman in your bed and feel it like a knife in your throat that it's not me.

I want you to think of me in public places and have to swallow hard and dig your nails into your palms to make the thoughts go away.

I want to sneak into your mind unbidden when you hand is on your cock and you're all alone and you were thinking of someone else, something else, but suddenly it's me you're picturing.

I can see you there, one hand stroking your cock, the other sliding over the stubble on your face and head, rough and smooth, your hips twisting (that one bit of your body I can't get out of my head) your voice catching, yes, yes, there, that, and if I could see into your head I'd find myself staring back into my eyes.

I want you to whisper in my ear when we see each other that you miss me, you wish things could've been different, but it was the wrong place, wrong time, wrong whatever. But the right me.

Did you whisper my name when you came? Lick your fingers and smile?