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by Katie Bowers
I never could quite grasp why wanting a boy,
the one you think you love,
to slip his fingers between your thighs
was invasive
see also: encroaching
see also: crude
see also: slutty
this misinformation, this obfuscation, this deceit
led me to learn
that the root of the word love comes
from pleasure—the origin of desire
and that the core of desire is longing
for whatever the heavens have aligned—
as I searched for understanding
in the map of constellations
freckled onto all of my lovers' backs.
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Katie Ellen Bowers is a poet and educator living in the rural Southeast with her husband and daughter. Her work has been recently published in Qu Literary Magazine, Haunted Waters Press, and The Dewdrop, for which she was nominated for The Pushcart Prize.