How will I tell you I’m demisexual?
by Jordan Stanley
this first date has been a bonfire.
splinters we throw in grow
the flame. you’re all bra strap off
shoulder, satchel rounding your hips
like a lasso when you walk in. kinetic
energy wrapped in tweed blazer. we are oil
in cast iron. the banter is damn good.
I dread the moment you stop
understanding me. after dessert,
when I call my own cab home. your eyes
will ask, weren’t we having a nice time?
I will recite my take-things-slow, my come-
around, my get-to-know-first, my just-
you-wait, but I refuse to let you
forget I made you laugh until
your nostrils flared like moons tonight—
you think I’m beautiful. instead,
what if I told you, my want hums
long and low like sonar? and don’t you want
to be that song? the one I've known
since birth? I won’t jump your bones. I’ll rename
each of them. phalange becomes Piano
Spider. femur goes by Rhubarb Stalk. classify
your skeleton until I know you
in marrow. leave microscopic trail markers
for future touch. I will spend our dates falling
for the facts of you. the french press
by the bathtub. books stuffed with leaves
from reading under the loquat tree.
your mother’s ceramics. your brother’s
temper. how you rock a butcher’s knife.
how you wield a baby. how you hold
a lover saying, “no, not yet.” I long
this way. my love
languages are encyclopedia and slow-
heating skillet. I flirt like a perennial
flower—keep coming back—the yellow
Parisian scarf my grandmother draped
over her lamp taught me the cinema
of sex. I want to ask, have you ever woken
up to 4 o’clock light flooding a living room?
one moment, you’re asleep. next,
you’re slow-dancing with the sun.
that’s how it feels to realize I am safe,
my stomach unknots and I become
a hunger pang body—I am ravenous.
when we get to that point—will you care
I took my sweet time? will you call me
prude? bait? child? defect? will you tell
my eager fingers they’re too late?
or will you draw them closer? say you understood
me from the start? will wait for me
to get the vertebrae right—Support Beam.
Mother Armor. Fingernail Tightrope. Backroads
Home. exhale as I replace your body’s
deadnames. know I will show up ready, lusting
after the crevices of you. my hands
find their places by heart.
Jordan Stanley (they/them) is a queer poet and content writer who performs at open mics across Los Angeles where they now live. You can read their work on South Broadway Ghost Society.