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.