Colette Reed
Horror Movie Summer
I dreamed of you like the fish dreams of the seabird, knuckle deep in river mud.
Imagine it, the mosquitos rising from the bed in cacophony to bury their tongues
in the flesh of my legs. See me, standing translucent in my underwear
with the water up to my kneecaps, sunlight blonding my hair
to pearlescence. This is, of course, before a killer tears me limb from limb, or
whatever he will do to drive you mad. You’re standing at the shore, grinning. Row
of crooked white pearls, your clinging t-shirt. Remember it: the light dripping
through the branches of the two pale trees above me. How much we wanted this,
the two of us in this oven of an apartment, sunburnt and pocked with bug bites,
getting on the train to dance with other people but to wake up
with the indents of your piercings on my cheek. I dreamed of the water.
I dreamed you were a mosquito, pressing your greedy mouth to the
thin skin inside my arm. I dreamed that when I am killed,
it destroys you. My body halfway up the hill outside our place, dripping blood,
choking out words to you across the days it’ll take you to find me.
Remember on the walk home from David’s party when I pushed you into the water?
You were in that short black dress that wouldn’t stop falling off your shoulders, and
when you clambered out of the river like a coyote out of his den I wanted to tell you
I loved you, but of course I couldn't say it. I knew, even all those years ago,
that I would wait until it was too late.
Colette Reed is a queer punk from ‘california.’ She makes comics, clothes, poems, prints, tattoos, and essays. Her work has been published in The Offing, Vagabond City, RUNT Magazine, and Chinquapin Literary Magazine! You can find her by your nearest body of water, or at colettereed.com.