No Definition, Only Space

There was a girl
who carried fire in her body
before she knew
the world would have opinions about flames.

She wanted to feel.

To touch life.
To taste it.
To disappear inside it
and somehow find herself there.

Sometimes she needed substances
to cross the distance
between herself
and what she longed to feel.

And morning came.

With its hard light.
Its questions.
Its shame.

And somewhere along the way
she began to believe

that the shame
said something true
about the fire.

It didn't.

The fire was never the shame.

Years later
I opened another door.

I showed myself—
unguarded,
naked,
innocent in my own skin—

and someone I loved
looked through the eyes
of his own fear.

And I forgot, for a while,
that another person's gaze
does not define
what it sees.

I took some of it inside.

His uncertainty.
His questions.
His shame.

Until his gaze
became a voice
inside my own body.

Is this okay?

Am I too much?

Do I want the wrong thing?

Should I want more?

Should I want less?

Who am I
if desire changes?

And my body, exhausted
from being questioned,
began to close.

Today
I am giving the questions back.

Not angrily.

Simply because
they are no longer needed.

I place one hand
on my throat

and one
on my belly.

And between them
there is no answer.

There is space.

My sexuality does not need
a definition tonight.

It does not need
to prove whom I love,

what I want,

how much I want,

or whether tomorrow
I will want the same.

I can desire
and remain mine.

I can open
and remain mine.

I can say no
and remain loving.

I can change my mind
and remain whole.

I can feel nothing
and still belong
completely to my body.

And to the girl I was,

I say:

Come here.

You do not have to become
less wild
to come home.

You do not have to explain
what happened.

You do not have to wash
your desire from your skin.

There was never anything dirty
about being alive.

Give me the shame.

Give me the eyes
through which you learned
to watch yourself.

Give me every morning
you mistook regret
for a verdict
on your body.

I will hold what happened.

You keep the fire.

And slowly,

my jaw unclenches.

My throat opens.

Something trembles
beneath my ribs

and then—

quiet.

My pelvis softens.

There is nothing
I have to become.

Nothing
I have to perform.

Nothing
I have to reclaim
for anyone else.

Only this body.

This breath.

This moment.

And a sexuality
that belongs to no gaze,

no expectation,

no past,

no lover,

no definition.

Only a vast, living space
inside me

where desire may enter,

rest,

dance,

change,

or leave.

And I remain.

Soft.

Clear.

Here.

Mine.