I had to stop sucking
my thumb, my thumb
that loved to rest
on my soppy tongue.
I knew I had to stop,
the softness,
the wine-like release,
my thighs, for once, unpumped,
empty of blood, no need
to flee.
I’d known only rough
knuckles, the hard back
of a hairbrush
struck against my skull.
I’d never know
what wanted me
the way breath wanted me—
flowing in, flowing out
—if my thumb
hadn’t said to me
in its small sucking murmur,
Now, now. Now, now.
by Dion O’Reilly
Dion O’Reilly, the author of Limerence, Sadness of the Apex Predator, and Ghost Dogs, has work appearing in Cincinnati Review, Slowdown, Alaska Quarterly, The Sun, and Rattle. Coeditor of En•Trance Journal, she splits her time between California and Washington State.
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