yesterday afternoon - leah mueller

You said 

you loved me,

hand across my thigh,

but maybe you just loved

my thigh. There is no way

to know such things. Ask a

psychic: they’ll say

it happened for a reason.

Ask your mother, as she

smiles from her perch

in the netherworld.

You shuffle across the kitchen,

searching for breakfast:

grapefruit cut in neat segments,

stacks of buttered toast.

You are sustenance,

but I can’t admit it.

The years arrange 

themselves around us

like ill-fitting clothing;

we learn to shrink and grow.

Your fingers’ warmth,

and my firm reply: 

yes, again.

Leah Mueller is an indie writer and local journalist from Bisbee, Arizona. Her work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions. Her fourteenth book, "Stealing Buddha" will be published by Anxiety Press in 2024. Website: www.leahmueller.org.