When Women Drink We Love

By Julia Tagliere

Why is it that when women drink we love
We melt at your gentle insistence
and praise your strong hands
We shed our full-body armor
and open our honeyed limbs
We forget
When women drink we love
We do not, generally, shove bottles into your rectums
or try to force your flaccid penises inside of us
as you lie on the asphalt beside a dumpster
When we drink
we do not, normally, bloody your boxer briefs
or spray our sticky souvenirs into your hair
as your mouths scream against our hands
When we drink
we do not, usually, invite friends to watch, join in, and Snap
or laugh while our bladders empty onto your faces
as you curl into the tiniest balls of garbage human beings can become
When women drink we love
When women drink we forget
And how that forgotten fear fails us
when your insistence becomes force
when your hands become fists
when your love becomes hate
When women drink, we love
and are somehow condemned
When you drink, you hate
and are somehow pardoned
Why is that
Why is that

Julia Tagliere’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Writer, The Bookends Review, Potomac Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Washington Independent Review of Books, SmokeLong Quarterly, various anthologies, and the juried photography and prose collection, Love + Lust. Winner of the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition for Best Short Story and the 2017 Writers Center Undiscovered Voices Fellowship, Julia recently completed her M.A. in Writing at Johns Hopkins University. She serves as an editor with The Baltimore Review and is currently working on her next novel, The Day the Music Didn’t Die. Follow her at justscribbling.com.

Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash.