Touch, Not Sex

By Jonathan Fletcher

A finger can do so many things: 

Stroke the back of an anxious neck, 

type out a confession on an aging keyboard, 

finger the trigger of a neglected gun. 

Be safe, my mom tells me 

before I leave with my partner for a weekend trip. 

I wonder if she says so 

for her own protection instead of mine. 

When will she accept  

what I am, what I need, what I don’t? 

Forget condoms and bullets. 

Forget a world that says fuck, fuck. 

Can words not also be aimed and fired? 

I pull my other half into my shirtless body. 

Legs vined as one under pristine sheets. 

Nothing done in between that was not wanted. 

No watchful eye as there was in Eden. 

No need to do the things Adam and Eve were commanded. 

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Jonathan Fletcher (he/him) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts.  His work has been featured in numerous literary journals, including Funicular, Epiphany, and The Plentitudes.  A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which his debut chapbook, This is My Body, was published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas. 

Follow Jonathan on Instagram: @jonathan.fletcher9 - X: @jmfletcher84 - Bluesky: @jmfletcher15.bsky.social