by Melissa Leto

Melissa Leto, *the spine corrects itself,* digital photograph, 2026. Courtesy of the artist.

Blue Lollipop Ritual

Melissa Leto | July 2026 | Issue 53

Poetry

I.

Light a candle
for your former self
you will not return
from here.
Turn up Etta James
because maybe you would,
rather go blind,
except you’d rather just stop
let it all dandelion
spore
not the way she considers
letting go a forgetting. But
in a way of knowing
what a net is
what a human heart does
how heavy the longing
slight rip and it’ll boulder
right through.

II.

But it isn’t true.
I wouldn’t rather go blind.
What I want is another body under
my hands, for the salt of them
to flood all the walls and wells of me.
What I want is a little sugar
in my bowl
and the way there? A blue wooden
lollipop I carved in the winter
the handle spiraled the thwack
makes my whole body shiver
I take it I won’t tell you how many
where is not a location
but the length of a little sugar
in my bowl more than 50 berries
welting pulsing sting from the collar bone
through all the underlayers
of this longing a little
sugar a blue lollipop carved in winter
the spine corrects itself at first thwack
I can’t tell you where I end
but the first echo lives below the ribcage.

III.

After I open my body wide
to let in memories of pink
mouths dripping vulvic,
the way our mouths tasted
together how no one has ever
kissed like Massachusetts either.
I let memory flood loneliness,
to wash away and away her turning
away and away to my turning away
and away

the way I fuck myself
is slow and everywhere with windows
open and headphones on I wash
the dildo and anal beads in the shower
with the same juniper fir soap bubbling
my cunt then after, I want more
of myself, I let her go to them,
because
I miss the edged luxuries
of desire knowing
she can never feed me
until I am full—

no one can.
I am the cook.

Melissa Leto makes art near the Salt River on Hohokam land in Arizona. Their work has appeared in Anarkiss, Bloody Funny Zine, Shrew Lit Magazine, and their 40-poem fairytale, “dervish;wolf,” howls through previous issues of KHÔRA. Their art is in conversation with spaces where queerness, desire, kink, erotics, ecology, and the color green prism. They have an MFA from Northern Arizona University, are the lead facilitator for the literary arts nonprofit Revisionary Arts, and are an editor for Rinky Dink Press.