Bollywood Sex Poem

                                                                                                                                 after Cathy Linh Che

The opening score to your childhood plays.

The hero & heroine lilt slowly
                              towards each other. Two full-bodied blooms

fill your world, bump
gently together.

After: red stains on lips, disheveled
clothes, petals strewn.

For years, you anticipate this—a lowering
of lashes, slow stripping of sepal,

your soft centers seeping into his.
                           Your first hero rubs

against you like hardened stone, peels
you raw in the dark.

In your dreams after, every man turns into a flower
& flattens you against a wall.

And does she bleed after?

End credits roll.

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¹Two flowers meeting on screen was the predominant mode Bollywood movies used as a proxy for sex from the 1950s to 1990s.