Poetry

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You know it doesn’t feel right. When I take my shirt off, I 
take it off like the sexy blonde-haired protagonist of a 90s 
film. Two hands above my head. He always had a pretty 
chest, no marks, and a gold chain hanging round his 
neck. But my chest doesn’t look like that, and you know it 
doesn’t feel right. Tits, boobs, twins. Wanted so bad to be 
like the boys on the beach, the surfing kind, the skating 
kind, shirtless and flat. My first boyfriend, he’d walk 
around his East Los Angeles apartment in a heatwave no 
shirt, dirty blue jeans. Bare feet. He looked at me and I 
looked at him, we stared each other down on a sticky 
bed for different reasons. He wanted to devour me, and I 
wanted to be him. You know it doesn’t feel right, when 
they beg to eat you out and you just want to be held, 
bare chest to bare chest. 






Syd Brewster is a Black American writer based in the Hudson Valley. Her writing has been featured in Sink Hollow and God’s Cruel Joke. You can find her at sydbrewster.com