too tired to swallow

don’t block me during the day, he says.

i feel relief. i try to swallow the feeling that

he will block me. we are disposable things.

the accounts we met on are already gone.

it started sexual and i asked him what he want

ed. he said to take me out on a romantic date.

he said he’d pay. it wasn’t what i was looking

for but i think it was — would have been if

i could allow myself to want unobtainable

things. now we only snap little surface level

sentences back and forth like a game of tennis.

i was never any good at tennis. i can’t ever serve

a ball in the bounds — muster up enough force

to send something worth sending back. i ask if

you wanna call again and you say it was bad

last time. i text you back that i thought it was

nice. but you’re younger than me and you think

this is all bad, the way it started, the way it’ll

end. i can feel the familiar sensation of fingers

crumpling around me. single use, expiration

dates, gone stale.

.

there are moments where i feel like i can tap

into a soul — swallow a person by the spoonful.

then those moments are over and i can’t

understand how to get back. how to spit up

enough to make you not regret it anymore.