by Nick Black
He bought me a Moon Cup. I had to admit I’d never heard of them before and he got that look on his face, like he wanted to laugh and dip me in acid at the same time. He’d picked it up at the zero-waste store when we last went, when the girl at the counter commented on the ‘WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS’ t-shirt he was wearing and he told her she had to watch the new Almodovar, where Penelope Cruz wears the same, and when we left, I asked if he was flirting with her and, yeah, I guess I saw that expression then, too, while he was walking next to me with my gift of a menstrual cup in his back pocket.
I asked my friend Analeesa if she knew about them and she said “of course”, but not unkindly. She finds my vanilla endearing. When I told her why I was asking, she said, “Boy, he really takes ‘up in your business’ to a new level, that one”, which did make me laugh, at the time.
He does like to be involved. “Mother Earth is dying…,” he moans into my lower belly, having peeled off the hemp panties he talked me into, (and more often out of), “…and we’re killing her,” torturously slow-tracing a fingertip along the back of my thigh. I reach down and tear the scrunchie off of his topknot so his hair flows over his shoulders, like wastewater. I consider the unsunned buttocks at the base of his sleek back and picture jamming my cup right between… He looks up and smiles and I smile back, sweet as millet.
Nick Black manages a couple of libraries in London. His writing has been published in lit mags including Okay Donkey, Splonk, Lost Balloon, Ellipsis Zine and Jellyfish Review. His debut collection ‘Positive and Negative’ has recently been published by Ad Hoc Fiction.
