portrait of a picnic as a feast by Whitney Hansen

your fingernails dug through the skin

of a peach — citrus juice pricked

at your tongue, dribbled

to your elbows, glistened

on your lips before

you kissed me, laid me down on the bed

of gingham and moss

as the ants found our lunch

& your hand found my throat, tissue-

thin & quivering

against the familiar weight of your palm

twigs cracked against my back,

percussion punctuating rustling grass

& cardinal arias

you wrapped us in the perforated

picnic blanket afterward, a cocoon

to make the caterpillars jealous

I could have rotted there with you

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Whitney Hansen (she/they) is a Midwestern writer and teacher who would fight God for half a sesame bagel. Their work is published/forthcoming in Olney Magazine, Variant Literature, Nightingale & Sparrow, and more. Twitter: @whitneyhansen_