When we touch
There is no permanent,
no incidental or even
lasting feeling, in flawed skin.
Loose muscles tightened in disuse,
imagined strain ignores sense but hits the senses—
igniting the spinal cord,
watching it spit and drag along
bone foundations;
until every synapse catches
and the blaze betrays sense
and it all rushes into smoke
and mirrors.
Tell me
my goose pimples
spreading like scales,
the hairs more erect than I ever was,
the last flames faltering
and dying in my throat.
I want to say something as you’re
touching me
but every word
vanishes in the haze
and I can only gasp
through lips chapped & searing
f o r g i v e m e.
From Wendy to the Lost Boys
i was allowed to come out,
fly from neverland’s closets
to the edge of a rainbow morning
i am allowed
to wear dresses i am allowed
to love & to love &
cry & love & cry & cry
& love.
i know why you followed peter,
his twink-ling eyes
cupid’s bow lips
naked chin.
i followed him too.
but you?
i hear you humming
just on the other side of morning
seeing my sun rise,
feeling only half the heat.
choose, lost boy:
peter or tinker bell
tiger lily or captain hook
with his crocodile tears
and masc-for-masc grin.
tick. tock.
when will it be time for the lost boys?
when will we clap for your existence?
peter drew you into never neverland.
i returned, loving both
& permitted to cross between.
peter never listened.
you grew up a long, long time ago.
we should have noticed, heard you
clapping for peter, clapping for me.
you believed
in fairies and pirates
in tinker bell,
twink or bear--
flower-petal skirts & kinky hooks.
i see you now:
grown up.
not lost, not confused
not hiding &
more real than a
vengeful seafarer
capable of loving just one
man.
before your light fades,
before the clock stops–
i clap for you, lost boys.
i clap as you
soar through the morning
past peter, past the ending
forcing you one way when
you were always
both.
never, never land, my lost un-lost boys.
you have a sky full of stars,
shimmering fairy dust flight
carrying you on to your beautiful beautiful
bi boy light.
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Room Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, and others. She is the flash winner of the 2022 F(r)iction Spring Literary Contest and has been nominated for the Best of the Net, Pushcart, Utopia, and Dwarf Stars awards. Their speculative poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is out now from Android Press. Find them on Twitter as @MariscaPichette, Instagram as @marisca_write, and BlueSky as @marisca.bsky.social.