by Ava Winter
I miss this more than sex:
to be held afterward by a man
whose belt has bruised my skin.
Into the snow I stepped
as a boy each time it fell
to feel something. Barefoot
into the burning white
I would run
and then return
to my mother
waiting
with something warm to drink.
I live between bars now
and the snow outside is soiled
as it falls. So I stay in,
eyeing a grid of men
who’d like to leave me
more lonely
than I already am.
Perhaps it’s unfair to project
intent
when disregard has served me
just as well. I’m trying
to find language for what we do
to one another, by which I mean
what I have done to another,
and another, and another.
Ava Winter wrote the poetry chapbook Safe House (Thrush Press, 2013). Their poems have also appeared in The Baffler, Grist, Meridian, Muzzle, Ninth Letter, Poetry International, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. They received his MFA from The Ohio State University, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University. Ava is currently a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln