for guilty pleasures

praise for guilty pleasures; like when

our friends invite us for ice cream and she wants to join until I say,

I’m tired, I’ll stay home but you should go

and she doesn’t

for sharp delinquent nails in the summer unleashed

on a bug bite, dead skin slid down skin raw but

eyes rolled up and back

arched

for the occasional healthy narcissism:

friends revealing themselves as lovers,

strangers who remember my name,

men that are creepy

but not quite lethal

all those eyes on my body

for falsities:

like playing a cashier instead of being one

clocking into a new body,

a new name, accent, back

storied past display for customers arriving

my way

and having friends

our shoulders touching, truth stretched across each one, truth (benevolently)

bent for the girl who sits with us, she’s our friend she really is

nice, but she’s not invited and she shouldn’t know it and for once I am absolved

of the burden of agency

and all the other lies too

through the teeth, out of the ass, white, black, smoky, woolen, all of them

praise for the propensities of pleasure:

to resist dictation,

to defend an intensity immutable

by any label; shame simplicity sin guilt or

some other petty adjective;

praise for this immunity.