In Please Don’t Leave Me Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Patrick Levy shows us what we want: connection, sex, power over others.

“O Scarlett I don’t know what mountains these are,” but I know longing when I see it.

Longing for connection “when I swim into your white dress.”

Longing for pain in footsteps “still pressed across my chest,” longing for release in lipstick that can explode a face.

“And sometimes Scarlett I am afraid to touch you with these hands I’ve broken over steering wheels.”

There is brokenness here.

A sweaty shaking heart.

A radio moaning.

A man cut “into equal mounds of dough.”

And there is sex. Heels braced against bedposts, tongues like kite strings. Berry-flavored hips. “A strong ocean of paint spilling out from the fold of your neck when I kiss you.”

In Please Don’t Leave Me Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Patrick Levy shows us what we want: connection, sex, power over others.

He shows us what we fear: loneliness, unfulfilled longing, that we don’t even have power over ourselves.

He shows us who we are.

Read this book.

Find out.

K.M.A. Sullivan

K. M. A. Sullivan has been awarded residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in creative non-fiction and from Vermont Studio Center in poetry. She is the editor of Vinyl Poetry and the owner and publisher of YesYes Books.

https://www.kmasullivan.com/
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