Dovecote
Courtney LeBlanc
Did Not
I did not toss the empty beer bottle out the window, did not watch it disappear in the tall grass. Did not turn my head to hide the blush when he said, If it didn’t break that means you’re still a virgin. Did not acknowledge the warmth spreading through my center. Later, when I took him in my mouth I did not resist the pressure of his hand on the back of my head, did not know that pushing back was an option. But also, I did not “finish”, did not know there was a finale I was withholding from him. I did not get the blue balls joke he dropped in front of his friends that summer. He did not kiss anything other than my lips, no matter how many backseats we climbed into. He did not ask if I enjoyed it when his hand crept down my pants as we drove back country roads. And while I did not know it at the time, for I did not have a map to the body I was newly exploring, I did not allow him the full pleasure of me, not once.










Courtney LeBlanc is the author of Beautiful & Full of Monsters (forthcoming from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), chapbooks All in the Family (Bottlecap Press) and The Violence Within (Flutter Press), and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has her MBA from University of Baltimore and her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She loves nail polish, wine, and tattoos.