WHY I DIDN'T SAY NO, BY SARA PIRKLE |
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Even as his kisses swept the back of my neck, even as he pinned me in place with his leg wrenched over my thigh, even as he squeezed my breasts like ripe fruit and expelled a shuddering sigh, I said nothing. Still as a pillow, I gazed at the digital clock’s glowing face with a glazed-over thought: nothing lasts forever, this too shall pass. Maybe some part of me understood it, or the idea of it, a man so crazed by my angles and curves he couldn’t help himself. Maybe I deserved it, crawling into his cologne-soaked sheets after a dusty evening of tequila. Maybe in that drunk-dark hour, I saw myself in his loneliness. Then, he rolled away like a boulder blocking a tomb. It was over. I didn’t hate him. In the cobalt blue swell of morning, listening to his shallow breath, I knew why I didn’t say no. I’d made similar mistakes, wanting what I shouldn’t have. Desire once capsized the principles lugging me through life. So later, when he apologized, his voice shaking like a willow in a storm, I accepted his words the way a river accepts rain, evaporated elements returning to their making. |
Sara Pirkle is the author of The Disappearing Act, which won the 2016 Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. Her poems have been published in Rattle, Reed, Entropy, TAB, The Raintown Review, Emrys, and Atticus Review, among others. Sara has received writing fellowships from The Anderson Center, I-Park Foundation, and The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. She is the Assistant Director of Creative Writing at The University of Alabama, where she also hosts the Pure Products Reading & Lecture Series.