i. i trace her chin with my fingertips; the blush spreads like stardust painted with blood on her cheeks. oh how i would like to paint her in lavender and warm her cold// he tries to paint pink petals on my neck, with a paint brush too thin. i realize after ten minutes that it was his fingers. i sit still, let him smudge the blush i cannot see; he can. i loved both, separate from each other, at two different times. i loved her warmth and his charcoal; the sandalwood she loved and the fumes of his paints; her loud laughs and his barely-there smiles.
ii. my biromantic heart serenades my demisexual mind; her lace bra felt like aesthetics and his naked chest like comfort. her mattress was short enough that i curled on top of her; his was hard and so we became foetuses on the floor. to love is not to desire. to desire is to love. the road goes one way.
iii. i am no stranger to pleasure. the last time i saw someone's body as a site of my shivers is a haze i cannot clear. i love in cuddles and hugs, sitting in their laps and hearts, never going beyond them - never reaching inside their bodies. i love in burning stars and soft stardust, never in flaming suns and hot drops of sweat. i paint my lovers on my hands and use those hands to hold their hearts. they touch my lips and trace my skin, they share warmth and words that i myself borrowed. they write letters and words and slowly turn into sentences. rarely do i want to rearrange the letters to spell desire.
iv. it's easy to love, but difficult to explain. jump to third base - youshouldknow-imightneverdesireyourbody. they try to decipher and i sit there waiting. for what?
is it real when i love? ask my art, my words - they are more honest than my tongue. even when my body doesn't crave? ask my defiant eyes. i don't choose genders, I choose lovers; and my love wants for them to hold my heart as i start to shake from stories of desire i might never feel; to see the silver shine beyond my lack of desire for their bodies, trap it in their bodies and gift it to me as my own valid love story on days that i feel lost. or just, not me. there is a belonging in validity. and i belong.
'Untitled' won a special mention in Teen Belle's online competition, the Sappho Writing Competition (held throughout June 2020), sponsored by http://feministstickerclub.com