Communion

Sammy Bittman || Spring 2021

we’re having communion over meatball pizza,
our fingers slick with grease and our bellies warm with
dough and lazy laughter—we are in no rush

i don’t try to remember what we laugh about anymore,
it always escapes me the moment i reach for it
like a bar of soap in the shower
or catching a firefly in a glass—i don’t know which is better. i’m
running out of good metaphors, i tell you, wiping at my mouth
with a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin, my spine running down the center
of your living room

i always feel heavier here, heavy like finally getting under your bed covers
like i won’t float away like some untethered birthday balloon,
caught in the corner of the ceiling
i feel like a birthday balloon when i’m alone lately,
i tell you. you tell me i am full of helium among other things—a compromise
everything feels like a compromise lately,
i tell you.

i lie where i can see you, can remind me you exist
that you’re full of meatball pizza
that we’re walking through March together
the box between us evidence of the evening,
of all the stupid nothings we got to speak aloud
i imagine our bellylaughs lounging on the cardboard or
lying on the wine-stained carpet between our bodies

i feel like God is here,
i tell you before i can pull it under my stubborn atheist tongue
like i’m holding something whole and sacred
you laugh and it keeps me glued to the floor.

i never felt like this when we spoke through our screens
my mind always wandering to the space
around your face, the way our voices would expand and contract
in the air long forgotten. all of it a tease, an almost-taste,
a barely-there brush of forearms on the street.

i much prefer your stained sweatpants from 11th grade
criss-cross-applesauced under you,
the paint retreating from the ceiling in dried purple flakes,
our 16th street scuffed sneakers
flung off our feet and into the corner.

you slide our phones away from us
shove a White Claw into my hands—black cherry flavor, my favorite—
especially with pizza, especially on saturdays.
is it really the weekend? the days all take up a similar space in me,
each hour folding into the last like a russian doll.
i can remember saturday
if i hold something in my hands
a cigarette or a second mug of coffee that you made
your magic eight ball while you do my makeup
i can remember saturday
if i spend my words
instead of saving them for later
and swallowing them instead

the neighbors serenade us from a story above with 2000s music
we sit under them, wondering about the freckles on their faces
or the color of their eyes
everything feels like a compromise lately,
i almost tell you again, but i don’t want to repeat myself tonight
this will never get old,
i say instead.
no it won’t, you say, syllables slotting in between
the music that drips through the ceiling
thank God for communion
over meatball pizza.
i’ve been missing the sound of our voices
in a room together.