Press your hands to my hips,
those pale altars of skin and bone—
press until the silence cracks,
until my breath spills over your palms
like a sacrament.

Kiss the hollow of my throat,
let your lips linger—
an ache, a promise,
a hymn I can no longer remember
how to sing.
You bite,
and the air burns bright,
a flame curling through the tender shell
of my ear.

Take me in.
Undo me,
button by button,
layer by layer,
until I am nothing but a psalm of want,
a slick prayer pooling beneath you.
Let your hands find the rivers of me,
trace the tide rising to meet you.
Drink from me—
the salt, the heat,
the want too loud to bury.

You move,
and my name trembles on your tongue.
You move,
and the world folds itself in half.
You move,
and I am nothing but muscle,
spasm, surrender.

Inside the rhythm of us,
you burn—
a fever blistering against my skin.
Your breath scatters across my shoulder,
and it feels like fire and snowfall at once.
I beg,
but I don’t know for what.

When the flood comes,
it doesn’t ask for permission.
It rips. It wrecks.
It baptizes us in the sharp taste of ourselves.
And after,
the room hums with the aftermath—
a quiet that throbs,
a stillness that aches,
your fingers still curled against my thigh.

Stay,
I say.
Stay,
until the moon dips low
and the stars remember our names.
Stay,
and I will keep you here,
between the weight of my breath
and the hollow of my ribs.

Lucija Lotus Mlinarič