Lacuna (July)

We are ugly in the bent-up, contused blue light of too much tequila, bodies stuck
to the cold tile of the bathroom floor, begging harder and almost. After, you
slouch spent against the door asking why do you love me. If love is not a color or
a night, but the ocean bucking above the dock again and again, salt to heal, salt to
burn. Is there a good kind of pain. This damp heat, these familiar bodies. All this
world is a room we fucked in, and that place, too, and there. Sand grains rough
the back, splintering. Morning comes, and daylight for once feels overindulgent
and too bright. The boats know how to catch the swell and ride it. If our bodies
were not capable of such destruction, they could be beautiful.

BY HANNAH OBERMAN-BREINDEL

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Hannah Oberman-Breindel’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Best of the Net 2012, BOXCAR, Stirring, The Comstock Review, Thrush, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, and a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She is completing her MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she also teaches writing at the university and at a local men’s prison.