Leland Quarterly | Summer 2020
To the boy with the gap in his teeth
Anastasia Sotiropoulos
To the boy with the gap in his teeth. Woah, woah, woah—before I start, hear me out: I don’t ~do~ love poems. I don’t do poems that turn into love poems. Those make me sick. They’re sweet and soft and like diabetesoverflowing. Type 2. Not 1. Self-inflicted. I’ve tried writing about everything but you, anything but you. I’ve tried writing about the way the sunlight hit the line of palm trees as I left the ER Monday after I fell off my bike, but when I think of a fall I think of you. Falling and falling and I’m falling for you. Ew. I had to get stitches. After the fall, that is. “Laceration on the left leg,” the nurses said. The L-word lines the inside of my mouth. L-O-WOAH. No. No. No. That word is familiar and soft and cozy—well I wouldn’t go as far as to say cozy, what’s the word… sticky? Oh yes, sticky. Familiar and soft and sticky. To the boy with a gap in his teeth. When I fell in [~insert long pause here~] with you, it felt like the inside of a McDonald’s playhouse. You know the ones. The bright plastic with the pillowed floors and walls—soft edges— tempting colors. The ones you’d beg your parents to let you enter as a kid—salty fingers freshly licked, McFlurry in one hand, hope in another. They’re innocent. Familiar. Soft. But sticky. Eventually, you grow up. You stop going, but I keep going to you, am I still falling for you? Ew.
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