My first girlfriend lives next door.
Today she came to me for advice about women.
We’ve shared shits and showers and now walk freely naked in each other’s view, and for these last few months she has been in love. Now is the decline of the once-consuming interest and it was so predictable–even she and her girl saw it as horizon and kept driving forward, kept clinging to the comfort as it stifled them. It was in this way once that she and I fused to one concentration and then retracted full-force, only now it is she who wishes for release, she who parts with her love showing more guilt than confusion;
because, there are other girls, beckoning Muses that sing
“Help me to know the love of a woman, kind friend.”
And my advice to her is logical, if not admittedly strategic:
“Step lightly,” I say,
“But flirt hardcore.
“And never give away too much . . .
because then you’ve changed the game”

Last night the second the girl’s pinkie moved against mine and our fingers began to methodically curl and stroke, the screen flashed scenes of death and scary figures but I was safe in the closeness, wet from the touch, reborn in that dark theater to feelings from a past life. Later in the car I want to rest my thigh on her gearshift and lean into her
as she shivers, scans the streets, decides which Ani to play and sings out loud like me.
At the drop-off I lag behind to pause and stumble over my words, to ask again about Amoury and
how far that Poly spreads . . .
and then she answers, pulls me back from hanging half-way out the door and I am stuck to her, she is biting my lip and opening her mouth wide to Let me enter, and god! I could bring her upstairs, bring her to climax,
so long as she didn’t ask for it.
But she wouldn’t and neither would I so we step lightly,
float in and out of each other like free spirits,
flirt hard and then disengage,
like two girls so afraid of confinement
it has a name, this fear disguised as disinterest.

My first girlfriend showed me what it feels like
when a woman is in love with you,
how the heat collects between two wombs,
how the fingers and belly and sex of one girl
can invoke the longing of another.
She taught me where to seek sweet abandon and I tell her now about
resistance, as if it were
Easy.

Kerry Slora
Burlington, VT