Filling the New House

The boy in my kitchen wears your face
how the walls wear their white
paint—could be any kitchen.

But there is a strange precision
to the way light hits and it holds.
It takes everything I have

to not peel it off and search
for something else of you there,
in that absence. Or, to not peel it off

and offer everything I have. My broken
cell phone. My timid sleep. My ability
to orgasm. My entire sophomore year.

Everything you took or trained.
Everything that fell through
our murky water and came up clean.

Somewhere, your hands part a girl
where she is most like the ocean.
Your hands dictate the rising tide

of her body, you full and furious
moon. I do not sink down in the dirty
linoleum, float face up in silence.

Do not wring the salt from this wet
animal tongue. Do not even move
to reach inside his mouth, this boy

who, after all, is not you. But he smiles,
parts his own lips. And I wait,
like I have been waiting, for you

to drown me in your desperate,
spoiled sound.

by Cameron Awkard-Rich

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Cameron Awkward-Rich is a student and writer based in the bay area. In 2012, his rookie year, he represented bay area venues at the National Poetry Slam, the Individual World Poetry Slam, and the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. Cameron's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Revolution House, The Polari Journal, Aim for the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry, among other places. Usually, Cameron appears on the train somewhere between his home in Oakland and Stanford University, where he is pursuing a PhD from the program in Modern Thought and Literature.