Apophenia

 

​​I once tried to read the palm of a man I did not know. His fingers were long and could not stay face up; he reached for my breast instead. I felt no warmth in his hand, in my chest. All we left was an indentation on the couch, its loose cover twisting like a woman’s white veil.
 
                                                   *
 
I was taught to never look a man in the mouth; rather, I have learned to demand his family secrets. I am old enough to know what these mean, that I can use them to build a shrine. His father’s mistress had long black curls. No words exist for his mother’s lovers.
 
                                                  *
 
Black underwear makes a constellation around my ankles. Capricornus, perhaps. Backlit by the television, he tells me I resemble a woman. He resembles something else. I run my tongue over the flattest parts of his teeth.
 
I can feel where he’s begun to grow antlers.
 
                                                  *
 
We watch one another as if the moon does not exist, as if there is body of water between us. I see a man at the bottom of this lake. He sees a doe instead.
 
                                                  *
 
            He preferred bruised fruit to anything.
 
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I want to catch my ankle in the spokes of his bicycle. My mother has a scar there too; its silver shines like a polished bone. She told me how it felt to fall forward, her talus flashing in the sun. I find this romantic. I would reach for his hand and kneel and lick the blood from my own leg.
 
                                                  *
 
We played by laying coins on each other’s eyes. I liked him best that way, smelling of stale metal, eyelids ringed in gray. We played by hunting in the dark. He taught me to identify prints, to gut, to dress. He only smiled with his hands deep inside a warm red cut.
 
                                                  ​*
 
In the dream, he is a feral child who does not speak. When I wake, he is a shadow moving across the door. When I wake, I have no mouth to open.

 

 
​by Paige Quiñones

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Paige was born in Portland, OR and grew up in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico and Tampa, FL. She is currently in her thesis year at the Ohio State University MFA program, and is also a Poetry Editor for the student-run literary magazine, The Journal. Her work has appeared in The Boiler Journal and Quarterly West, and her poem “Blood Sport” was recently named a finalist in the 2015 Indiana Review poetry prize. Her work primarily engages with feminism, young marriage and family, and her Latina heritage.