Poetry by Tessah Melamed

              Timo Newton-Syms CC



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Ryan Doesn’t Want Closure

Down so bad ur cumming thru the cruelty, backshots here so he can’t see your face when you, tell him you miss him - fuck, we’ve all been there - I’m feeling sorry for you, I’m feeling sorry for myself… it hurts all over. You don’t know the difference between regret and remorse; you catch an apology with your teeth, you catch a fist with your jaw. You swallow his spit, you cry on his cock. You are, if nothing else, a performer. Where’d you learn that, dirty girl, where’d they teach you how to spread your legs and sigh? Who held your hands and told you to rock your hips like this? Which boy? Show me the boy. Show me the boy who taught you. 

Show me the boy who hurt you.

I will take you down the hall of mirrors and you can learn to touch yourself again. 

God, he’s gorgeous. Evil is supposed to make you rot. 

You think you’ll be sick over what The Men do forever, the way they splinter your spine, the violence of it all.  Your pussy craves that violence now, your lips shape themselves around an apology to your abuser you carved into his red eclipse with the knife  on your keys, his hand on your thigh in the passenger’s seat: we all have a Ryan.

Let me… pull the petals off that flower, let me peel back your eyelids, expose those veins. Call me baby - one more time - I will scream so fucking loud the cops will come again. I want all your sugar and gasoline, all your gold. Spit in your palm and shove your fingers down my throat, one more time, wrap my bleach-broken hair in your fist. Let’s go ahead and fuck up these sheets, baby, one more time…

Down so bad the desperation chokes you, down so bad he’s beautiful now, down so bad...

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Tessah Melamed is a writer from New Jersey. She enjoys bad and beautiful things. Tessah has been previously published in Crooked Arrow Press, Trampset, As It Ought to Be Magazine and Soup Can Magazine. She is anticipating beginning her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago this fall. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @_wherestessah. 

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