Poem About Your Bottom Lip
by Megan Alpert

I was afraid to leave teeth marks but
             you can actually go a little harder you said
and a small huff       the truth torn 
from you a little      and I like that       I’ve held you 
at the edge of thought all day     held
             even further      how you folded into yourself 
and turned from it    

at first     I didn’t like 
your gentleness      like eyes adjusting
             to the dark        like learning
how painters talk in tone and color      you emerged 
to me              sort of velvety and delicate     like the inside 
of a foxglove     I bit your lip harder and 
a sound         a crushed flower        tumbled 
             from your mouth         now 

every morning 
             just before I wake        you appear to me 
and I ask grief to stay

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​Megan Alpert is the author of The Animal at Your Side (Airlie Press 2020), the winner of the Airlie Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Glass: Poets Resist and many others. She is the recipient of an Orlando Poetry Prize from A Room of Her Own Foundation and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Studios at MASS MoCA, and the Marquette Chamber Residency. As a journalist, she has reported for The Guardian, Smithsonian, Foreign Policy, and The Atlantic, and received a fellowship from the
International Women's Media Foundation.