Love Potions

Cinthia Ritchie

Yarrow, Dragon's Blood and Bergamot

The first one's name was Marky
and for years we slept curled together
in just our underpants, wiggling and kicking
and pressing our noses to each other's backs.
I was six the night I first tasted him,
that curled snail of flesh rising
to meet my tongue with the thick
sweaty smell of salt.

Apple, Bachelor's Buttons and Mandrake

In school, it was one boy after another
in back seats and pressed up
against the dark hallway after church.
I learned the taste of opened mouths,
the firm, sweet meaning of hips,
and how to make those boys
cry and squirm with the hot, knowing
dampness of my own tongue.

Cinquefoil, Caraway and Violet

He was married with a house, a dog,
four kids under the age of five.
We met at the cemetery at night
when the grass was damp and his mouth
tasted of onions and the garlic his wife
added to the spaghetti sauce.
I drank in his smells and tastes
until I was blind and scared
and screaming for him to kill me,
please, please kill me because
I just couldn't take it any more.

Patchouli, Cumin, Henbane

We did it in the middle of the road
once, gravel biting my back as we
pulled and pressed while headlights
blared around the corner. We almost
didn't make it in time, rolling toward
the ditch, my skirt catching beneath
a tire, a flash of white and then nothing
but the sound of his breath
moving down my back.

Lavender, Lovage and Meadowsweet

I danced in the dark
early in the morning, belly round and full
as I lifted my shirt and aimed my
bare stomach at the sky. Moon droppings,
branches of sage for blessings, I lay
on a bed of spruce and dreamed
of his face after his birth.
Fierce and small, this one:
I fed him my blood.

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Cinthia Ritchie lives in Alaska with her son, hyper dog and two stubborn cats. She is struggling with her thesis and hopes to finish up her M.F.A. this December. Her fiction, poetry and nonfiction publications include Conspire, Dare Magazine, Inklings, Mind Caviar, Wheelwatcher Companion II, Explorations, Clean Sheets, Inside Passages, Ice Floe: International Poetry of the Far North, Girlphoria, Horse Thief's Journal, Retrozine and Sho, with upcoming work in Scarlet Letters and Moist. She's also had two short plays produced.