This Poem is About Luca Guadagnino's "Challengers"

Didn't we invent something sex could not touch?

A mutual transfiguration by partners'

Conspiracy. To breathe together,

to sharpen against one another in conjunction.

And to sweat. To blossom like the dewfall.

So I directed the armies of my body to rebuild themselves,

Fingers curled around victory's condensation.

Sent out animal cries of celebration into the night.

I hyperventilated, frozen in the grocery aisle

at spreadsheets and trees reaching for every cut of meat.

You sliced straight-line decisions in my disaster kitchen

Brash laughing, manners lacking, mouths open to eat.

We devour strange powders and swollen-breast chickens

The ridges in your back curled up as a spring.

You clasped my hand, dove off of the rocks

I exhaled the fear into the sea.

Then: our footsteps flowering across the court, our

Friends sliding drunk in the backseat, our eyes meeting

Above clouds, together in an immense solitude.

Your arm outside the open window, a poem of angles.

Admitting to greed, or admitting to grief,

I am tired of the infinity within my own ribcage.

I come home and find the door left unlocked

For your tennis shoes set aside by the living room baseboard.

Josie Barboriak