Week 3: Sunburn kisses

Spidery crawl of deep scratches
Stitching the landscape of flesh
Mend the planes together, smooth
Moulded playdough
Prepubescent enamel
Rubbery skin
Inside peeled off fish batter
White and swollen

Raw and rubbing
Tight peach coloured micropore
Wrinkled chafing skin
The puckered red crayon scribble across your heart
Stings like sand sliding against sunburn
Danger wobble like a
Jelly Tip at the beach

Colourless lines
Waiting for the felt tip sun
To colour me in
Red and gold and brown
Like peanut butter scooped
On an apple slice


Rowan Moulder is a short fiction author and sometimes poet. He has a passion for queer representation and strives to include lovely, messy, real and beautiful queer people in his writing. His poetry was published in Eel Mag in 2022.