Paige Johnson

Miss Macchiato

I never liked the way syrup sat on my tongue.
Caramel lingering, globular like semen, 
but you have a charming foaminess
that puts a spring in my step. 

I’ve heard girls behind the school’s Starbucks counter
joke that you’re the campus’s Marilyn Merlot,
a sugar baby who likes a cinnamon nip in her afternoon coffee.
They say, some nights you study astronomy on the café deck, 
a pastel bottle of bubbly poking out of your Burch bag.
I can only imagine how much more artisanal you look 
under quivering palms and the mist of midnight,
crystal earrings dangling like chandelier segments.

Even in my perpetual wedges and short skirts
I’m not as obvious an escort as you—yet your class is in its subtly,
wardrobe wielding muted tones, body sculpted by jazzercise,
a mixed mama and dead daddy. “No wonder she’s hooking,”
the jellies in leather pants pout, reapplying lipstick
no one will lick off.

The library is my midday haunt before badminton practice,
theater dates with young Sheldons & sushi dinner with fresh-face techies.
I want to convey somehow that we’re one of the same,
that the SeekingArrangements billboard above the entrance 
to our Modesto campus is no mistake.

I want to tell you that the students popping sunnies on the weekend,
Wellbutrin and recreational Vyvanse during study hall, 
are no less fragmented than us—
we just scatter our attentions elsewhere,
sell affection instead of hoarding it 
for fulfillment-free fuckboys
who can’t hold a conversation,
much less a post-grad degree.

We like a finished product,
an intent provider/personal mentor
while we embark on our first project.
Though a same-sex confidante is still a savory treat,
if a delicacy to discover. So, I wonder if you’ll be my sugar sister,
candy girl, afternoon pick-me-up.

I think of telling you all this over raspberry refreshers,
a book of constellations cracked before me to draw you in,
but the yuri manga works just fine.
From the back, you tap my bare shoulder,
ask if I like the illustration included on the front.
On the flyleaf sprawls a girl, all blushed hips and bush.
“I drew it,” you laugh like miniature bells,
knowing it’s no different than the regular content.

“So, you’ll autograph it for me?” I laugh,
handing you a pompomed gel pen.
“This one, I’ll take the lost fee on.”
There’s something romantic 
about stealing from a library.

You dot your “i” with a smiley,
your name sounding more like
a strip club’s pink moniker
than your birthday gift.

I invite you to sit,
hoping my stare 
on your red-carpet curls 
and wench-dress chest 
aren’t too intimidating.

No, you compliment my taste in smut,
and the Helga Pataki pin on my bag.
Not an hour has passed before you admit
you had chemistry with AVN queen Riley Reid 
before the Japanglish scroll ink-stained her spine.
On-screen or in class? I ponder, realizing it makes no difference.

I admit to selling used toothbrushes, bathmats, and nightgowns,
to having a little too much fun sweating out socks for fetishists
on the internet who eat up my emoji-censored stories like cakepops.
I must’ve been hypnotized by your eyes bluer than ten milli pillies,
made silly by the glittery tumbler of Miami slides you shared.

Three hours into our meet and greet, 
we’re sharing green pepper slices at Steve’s Pizza,
your heat slicking the cherry-red arcade joystick
when it’s my turn to crush space invaders
and a foamy pint I spill on the punk band-stickered partition.
By four o’clock, my finite math final is forgotten.
Five: I’m spinning you off my arm
like a top, saying, “You’re even cuter
in roller-skates” as
the carpeted walls orbit
us like ISS debris.

Six: “Have you ever had sex
with a girl?”
“Not in a way that counts.”
Who giggles first?
Who laughs last?
“Do you want to change that?”

Seven: “Stay the night?” you ask with a crack in your voice.
I toss my keys aside. “Light me up?”
You blow smoke into my mouth,
seal it with yours.
Dizzy me up.
“One more time?”

Got glow-in-the-dark galaxies gummed to your ceiling,
fan creaking, feet sweeping my bare calves,
sending shivers up my crooked spine, 
signals to come closer.

You scratch at my elbow, saying, “I wish 
I was a spacewoman. Then my feet
would never touch the ground.
I’m sick of all these splinters in my sole.”

At least, that’s how I assume you spell it
before your smile dissolves like sugar
and you sigh out puffs that smell like mocha
moonshine, your icicle earrings tickling my arm,
dangling in circles like space rings.
My stardust hypnotist,
sweet sleep-killer.