She’s feeling self conscious in her new dress<\/p>\n
ducking behind my figure as we meander<\/p>\n
through the evening streets of Chattanooga<\/p>\n
just as the streetlights begin to flicker on<\/p>\n
it is this yellow thing, I don’t know the term<\/p>\n
but her breasts pool out of the top<\/p>\n
her cute belly stretches the center<\/p>\n
and it makes her blue eyes-<\/p>\n
behind clear frames<\/p>\n
with stylized blood splatters on them-<\/p>\n
even more maddening<\/p>\n
we sit down for pizza at this worn brick place<\/p>\n
next to an open concept venue<\/p>\n
with a loud wedding reception<\/p>\n
blasting the top 40 hits and slurred toasts<\/p>\n
I’m practically drooling as she scans the menu<\/p>\n
and the couple seated a few booths behind us<\/p>\n
who she’s sure are watching and pointing<\/p>\n
laughing at her<\/p>\n
I turn and look at the boy<\/p>\n
who can’t be more than 15<\/p>\n
and when he catches my eye<\/p>\n
I am appropriately stern<\/p>\n
turning back I tell her she’s beautiful<\/p>\n
and I say it stuttering and unable to look at her<\/p>\n
because if I do for too long I might cry<\/p>\n
because being here I’m sort of happy<\/p>\n
and that would make things worse<\/p>\n
we are keeping this as casual as possible<\/p>\n
despite stopping ourselves<\/p>\n
in the middle of complements<\/p>\n
to stop something else from coming out<\/p>\n
after pizza we return to her condo<\/p>\n
the sky shot through with twinkling stars<\/p>\n
her dogs asleep and tongues lolling<\/p>\n
she slides her dress off slowly<\/p>\n
stands in front of the sliding door to the balcony<\/p>\n
looks at cars passing on the street below<\/p>\n
and asks me if I mean it<\/p>\n
when I say she’s beautiful<\/p>\n
I say yes, forcing myself to look her in the eyes<\/p>\n
when she turns with a face so expectant of hurt<\/p>\n
and she asks me to say it again<\/p>\n
to say it as many times as it takes<\/p>\n
because she wants so badly to believe it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She’s feeling self conscious in her new dress ducking behind my figure as we meander through the evening streets of Chattanooga just as the streetlights begin to flicker on it is this yellow thing, I don’t know the term but her breasts pool out of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3743,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3743"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141053,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140905\/revisions\/141053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}