a half-drawn-out currency left unspent.
To them: a pulled-punch.
To me: his tenured touch at my throat,
squeezing with those supple fingers
that haven’t seen a day’s labor.
Self-reflected fears bounce
off their fluorescent-numbed ears
but his razor gaze slices my eager eyes.
A familiar, festering wound; that penetrating,
invisible needle-stick pumps
toxic cure into my blue vein.
Under the guise of side-tracked wise-crack,
succulent pain delivered, devoured.
Unarticulated lust, not brush of flesh.
To them: a pulled-punch.
To me: his tenured touch at my throat,
squeezing with those supple fingers
that haven’t seen a day’s labor.
Self-reflected fears bounce
off their fluorescent-numbed ears
but his razor gaze slices my eager eyes.
A familiar, festering wound; that penetrating,
invisible needle-stick pumps
toxic cure into my blue vein.
Under the guise of side-tracked wise-crack,
succulent pain delivered, devoured.
Unarticulated lust, not brush of flesh.
***
Joanna Ellsworth is a full-time student at Utah Valley
University, a non-traditional senior majoring in English education with a minor
in creative writing. She enjoys writing poetry and fiction, often involving darker
themes which highlight counter-culture or expose social biases. As the mother
of two young girls, Joanna’s few extracurricular hours are usually spent pulling
double-duty as both a human jungle-gym and housekeeper, all while completing
her not-inconsiderable homework load, making her current 4.0 GPA nothing short
of miraculous. She is also a distance runner, currently training for
half-marathons. Most of her finest pre-writing happens during those long,
pre-dawn runs.
