I Come from a Long Line of Literary Sapphics

By Louisa Schnaithmann

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I want a woman the way birds, sick
from a long flight, want water. Her body

in motion, curves splaying out 
on the bed like flowers. I am desperate

for a body like my own. I bloom her
into existence, my lover, and she has

orchids in her hair, bright and resplendent.
I hold my hands out to her. She kisses

my fingers and wraps the white linen sheet
around me. I kiss and kiss and kiss.

The sunlight filters in. The curtains are sheer.
We take no time. We take it all.

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Louisa Schnaithmann is an autistic poet and the author of Plague Love (Moonstone Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, The Summerset Review, tiny wren lit, and elsewhere. She is the consulting editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry and lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

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