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6.3
Tiara Sutton
Age of Consent

1. We stole from the orchard out back, came home with oranges smuggled underneath our blouses. I remember rolling the clementine between my fingers, the mosquito-bitten orange burning bright in my fist. My tongue ripening inside of my mouth. Close, then closer, our breath tripped over each other. The leather tongues of gutted oranges lined the asphalt. It was our loot, a talisman looped between the thread of our camaraderie. 2. We're rapidly approaching the age of consent and the moths are gnawing at our blouses. The skin blushes as wings beat fury against the lining of our stuffed bras. We climb atop the hood of your car, the husks of cicadas cover the windshield. I lean over and whisper into your ear, your neck twitches beneath my mouth. I want your husk, I want every gash. I want you racked with the heat of me. You've pulled out a brown paper bag filled with bruised plums, our fused limbs glow under streetlight. 3. There's a village nestled in the small of my back. The war woman's cries are thickened with soot and jasmine. Her sandals tear into vertebrae, I am smothered in her burning. She said my body was a room that she wouldn't mind spending the weekend in. Her hunger eats its way through my hips, burrows beneath the wood of my lungs. I cry out. This is how we loved: Bit by burning bit.

Tiara Sutton is an emerging writer who enjoys eating mandarin oranges and other assorted fruits in the summer. She's currently reading Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties by Felicia Luna Lumis, and you can check out some of her earliest works on her blog: flowerina.tumblr.com.