Date night in an authoritarian regime

We walk the line between protest and tantrum,
a mental health day and a strike, willing the president

not to follow us into bed. We wash our bed sheets
twice a day to keep out the stench of fascism,

try not to let a deteriorating hairpiece tickle our skins
when we’re inside each other, all tongue and particles.

We hum to the beat of a dying world, our dates
held exclusively on the capitol grounds, lulled

into swooning by the croon of a detached senator
trying to block humans from bathrooms, or

the man with clammy hands writing
our fetus’ burial rights. We look for romance

in it all: pull each other’s guts out
before they can, dangling them like dark strands

of spaghetti, inching closer as we lean in
delicate and ripping with ache

searching for teeth and taste buds
in the bed of a burning earth.