Clement
The first pill is breathless, asthma on tongue when you pluck Clement out of Pandora’s Box, steal her from her sisters, wheeze for her lips, and needle her into your veins.
The second pill simmers, pining left after war, uncracked holes and giggled promises made in brevity between then and—
The third pill empties Clement, appetite voracious, jaws unhinged in touch-starved years wailing.
The fourth pill is prettier. “I’m scared she’ll leave,” lovers say, and they are right, because Clement is a drifter, passing from bed to bed, hair done up even as she kisses your thighs, leaving the barest imprint of her clementine lips to corrode your mind.
Absent abstinence
drowned in the fifth, seventh, ninth.
Kels Liu (she/they) is a cross-genre creative writer born in New York and uprooted to Florida, where she is a senior in Stetson University’s Sullivan Writing Program. Although they are majoring in Marketing, their heart lies with their minors in Creative Writing and Business Systems and Analytics. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Touchstone, Stetson’s student-run magazine, and UCSB’s Spectrum Literary Journal.
The Albion Review 