What People Tell Me When I Tell Them I'm Asexual
One:
You're just gay.
Really, so how I love
Is just repressed -
Like I can just come out
From the darkness you seem to see
In my chest.
That I'm ashamed of my heart,
But with your diagnosis
I'll shine in thanks,
Just for you, you who knows
The atriums of my heart better than me.
Two:
...like plants?
I won't even justify that with an answer.
Three:
You just have to find the right person.
I have, twice in fact.
Two boys -
One like me, another not.
One with prismatic hair, one with hair like wheat grass.
One with a body he resented, one unable to look in the mirror.
One made up of cigarette smoke, one made up of starlight.
Both of them were like the moon to me,
Alone, empty beautiful, terrifying -
I saw them through my telescope,
Unable to touch.
After all astronauts don't wear glasses.
For one I wasn't enough, for the other I was too much,
But both of them colored me in,
So never will I regret letting them.
Four:
Are you a sex victim?
Your sensitivity astounds me,
So much so that I'll answer
No.
Five:
How do you tell someone you love them?
I mean I could just tell them -
But I'm a midnight romantic,
One who treats people like heroin,
Or constellations.
Both take you somewhere else.
I use my senses,
Albeit touch is definitely not conventional.
Writing poems, sharing songs, smiling softly -
It's all very red rose petal bed
(Minus the bed).
Checking boxes, making lists, drawing diagrams -
It's all very scientifc,
But I can't ever seem to measure out
How much of them I love, and how much of them
I want to absorb.
Six:
Like a robot, that's so cool!
It would be, I don't disagree,
If I wasn't made up of bone,
Rather than brass.
Seven:
So you can't love?
I love like you breath,
I can't help it.
Or how you look at a sunset,
Awed, silenced.
Or like how you know snow,
A frozen, empty smell.
I have enough to spare
For an OS, so much love I'm a mess
Trying to stay lukewarm.
There's no point,
Everyone can tell when water boils,
And I'm way past 99.98 degrees,
So I'll stop acting like I'm 32,
If you stop acting like
I can't get weak in the knees.
Eight:
I could change your mind.
I could lug that leer right off your face,
But I won't,
And you won't.
Nine:
So you're seeing a doctor for that right?
Do I have to?
Ten:
That's not real.
Then what am I doing here,
Holding my heart out,
Just like the rest of you.