Queer Heartbreak Hotline

-your call is important to us-

My purple love.
knuckle resting on lips, the
liminal space of just-before coming

-someone will be with you in one moment-

Loneliness is a game of closed eyes,
or blindfolds, or thumbprints
smeared across lenses

-please hold-

Yes, please. Please hold
me, feel the way my chin
fits in the nook of your shoulder

-all of our operators are busy-

make some coffee. Hand me the
first ready cup, hot. I hang on,
blister, shake.

You’re already
no longer there.

 

---

Vestigial

Cut me out. A hollow sinus,
a swollen tonsil,

wisdom teeth jamming
up your jaw.

Cut me out. An appendix
inflamed, ready to burst,

a grasping reflex that
can’t keep hold.

I ain’t the one.
Once tight and inside

I’ve grown vestigial

cut out of your evolution.

 

From Spoon’s “I ain’t the one,” found on the album Hot Thoughts (2017).

---

 

Empties

picked up on our
last trek out

after the leaves lay tired,
a summer leaning over us.

empties, backs flattened to the
earth, tops and bottoms

folded in, like reaching to
do a sit-up, sun-bled colours

changed blue to bloo to bl-
back to silver.

tabs missing, undersides
quilted with dirt

dirt that’ll catch under
my nails, the earth

we fucked on, the beer I
licked from your palms.

 

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NIKKI DONADIO is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and holds degrees in English and Adult Education. She currently lives in Newmarket, Ontario and is a Master of Arts student at the University of Gloucestershire. Her short fiction has been featured in Plenitude and Gertrude; her poetry in Borealis, Her Heart Poetry, Typishly and Soliloques Anthology. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikki_donadio.

Copyright © 2018 by Nikki Donadio. All rights reserved.