About Men and Their Hands
By Kharys Ateh Laue
it wasn’t a good goodbye was it but then again
I was cold & prickly
and you couldn’t have known how
to get my hands off
so there was that
and there was me wanting to be
the infant bone in your ear
the belly puncture of your stomach
the clean wet skin under your tongue
and there was you leaving shriveled condoms
inside me as if I were a gutter or some thing
your pleasure the celebration
mine the afterthought
I would return the story you wrote
about men and their hands
only I lost it in the roof of my mouth
forgive me
by then we weren’t behaving like good people
to each other anymore
were we
you undid me in a way I never thought possible
a whole parable of time between then and now
now I’m writing again
I’m writing to say
a good goodbye
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Kharys Ateh Laue is a South African writer whose work has appeared in Jalada, Brittle Paper, Down River Road, Cleaver Magazine, and other literary journals. In 2017, her short story “Plums” was longlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Prize. Her academic work, which focuses on the depiction of race, gender, and animals in South African fiction, has been published in English Studies in Africa, Scrutiny2, and the Journal of Literary Studies. She currently lives in Port Elizabeth.
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