Erin Little

I’ll never forgive you for loving me most beautifully at the Super 8 in Lake Charles, LA

Thin sheets, analog clock radio, fatigued rattle 
from the window unit. The shower rail you used
for leverage to enter my many rooms. Never
more animal, more feral or brute than inside
those yellowed walls. We took photos of ourselves
in a bed where many had fucked before us, would keep
fucking after us, ecstatic to capture desire in the face,
to prove to ourselves this happened, we did this. 
The night cleaved in two like a peach & we patted each
other down, lingering in soft places. Puppy bellies stretched
under fluorescent lights. How come nothing was more tender
than the middle of the night when I had food poisoning & you
went into the strange dark for me? You took my pains as your own
in a room done up in cheap plaster that wouldn’t last the summer.

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Erin Little is the former editor-in-chief of New Delta Review and an MFA candidate studying poetry at Louisiana State University. Previously she was an editorial assistant at Penguin Random House in New York. Her work has appeared in Prelude Magazine, HAD, New Orleans Review and Chestnut Review. Find her online at eringlittle.com.