Jesse Millner
There’s room for love, even at the end of a life,
you thought as you perused the webpage
for the Mustang Ranch in Reno, Nevada, checked
out the women who were much too young for you
and you felt like a creep, which made
your loneliness even worse. During the pandemic you’d read
about skin hunger, how it was scientific fact that
babies needed to be touched, and you remembered
how when you were a kid, you begged
your mom to rock you to sleep each night
when the darkness lay before you, even then filled with nightmares.
Your wife divorced you early in the pandemic
and for three years you touched no one, except
for yourself, which is a story no one wants to hear.
Valerie is 29 years old, has a beautiful smile and coal black hair
you imagine shimmering in the moonlight. Her breasts are large and firm,
the descriptions of what she’ll do for you make you horny
but then loneliness floods your tired spirit and you realize you’d pay
Valerie just to hold you in her big brothel bed, and whisper
to you, It’s gonna be all right, which is always a lie,
but in that holy quiet, you’d believe
her for just a little while, in that stay
against sorrow and brokenness.