Tonight's Poet Corner: Bet

Bet
by Belinda Roddie

Can we talk about when we kissed
after arm wrestling by the hotel swimming pool,
seasick on daiquiris and Honolulu air
as our bodies tensed up like the tightropes
we walk on every goddamn day?

Or are we just going to avoid eye contact
in our room, tucked away in our queen
beds, keeping the AC on such high
blast that I can't even hear the ocean
or my own thoughts so I can process it all:

The lingering strawberry on your lips,
your fingers tracing stardust on my jaw,
pulses radiating through soaked tank tops
as we navigate trauma on an island
where we can pretend that everything is okay?

It wasn't that I let you win: It was that
I couldn't keep up the challenge anymore.
Not with the way the sunset turned your hazel
eyes into golden spirals. And not with the way
you smirked as me, asking, "Are you even trying?"