Thrown Out
BY ANNA SZILAGYI.
The green gingham couch is out by the curb.
My parents dragged it up the basement steps
sweating and cursing. I tell my partner I got
eaten out for the first time on that couch.
My pants were around my ankles and
all my boyfriend’s clothes were on.
I was sixteen, and he told me his friends
warned him it would be nasty, but it wasn’t.
In eighth grade, my friend nudged me and my crush
down those stairs while everyone else sprawled out
on the swingset and lounged in the backyard grass.
The Real World played on TV as his stubble
scratched my lips, his tongue everywhere
but my mouth, my teeth clacking against his
with no rhythm. I could barely eat for three days
after he asked me out—a nervousness I mistook
for passion. I ached to understand my friends,
private investigators who tracked the whereabouts
of the boys they liked and plotted dates disguised
as group hangouts at the mall and movie theater.
At twenty six, I watched Real Housewives
on the couch my date shared with two roommates.
She showed me the view from her roof,
and I set my drink on the asphalt to kiss her.
She asked me to come to her room.
I fumbled with the button of her jeans--
neither of us came; we held each other naked.
When I left her apartment, I walked the thirty minutes
home in the sun and shook my head at the sky.
In a full-body blush, I felt the hurt I’d endure
swelling over my head about to tumble me
into the sand. I knew then I would stand up,
salt burning my nose and eyes, thrown out
and baptized and ready to take it again.
Anna Szilagyi is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. Her poems about gender, sexuality, and adolescence have appeared or are forthcoming in Banshee, Dykes and Dolls, Hooligan Mag, and Voicemail Poems, among other places. She received her MPH from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and is also a scholar of the reality television arts and sciences. You can find her on Instagram @anna_szil and read more of her work at anna-szilagyi.com.