Written 10.12.21. Kuuleimomi asked: “What does your favorite self feel like? What do you like about them?” An answer in two parts: for when I’m alone and when I’m with others. Cross-posted to IG.

References in Solo:

• “the understood boundaries of yourself” is from Robin McKinley’s Sunshine
• Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic
• “new suns” is from Octavia E. Butler’s unpublished archives at the Huntington
• Walter Mercado says he has sexuality with the wind in the documentary, Con Mucho Mucho Amor

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i. solo
Sun-drenched and
glutted on books,
reaching for my third book of the day
the way I would another bar of chocolate:
guilt-free, shame-free, unrepentant.
This is where I find joy and pleasure,
because there is always room for dessert
or another hundred thousand words.

In as little clothing as possible
(doctor’s orders), the sun fills me up –
firm touch, heat that unravels me, a comfort
I soak in. My skin is always thirsty after all.
And when the wind slips across me,
I think get what Walter Mercado means,
the sensation of turning my head to the sun,
my shoulders to the wind,
the way I would ask a lover for their touch.
Sunlight spilling into me, working its
radiance through me the way Audre once worked
that yellow kernel of color into margarine.

There is nothing more I love than
a good story, the understood boundaries of
my self stretching. I take in whole worlds,
new suns, letting it make my heart
an open door for different ideas,
new knowledge; I let myself be found
in the words of people I’ve never met.
I let this familiar sun fire me, and
with sunscreen and coconut oil,
forge me anew.

ii. duet
Under the sheets and countless blankets,
a mountain of pillows, the kind of bed
I’ve been dreaming of since I was twelve
and read Hawksong. My body and yours,
wrapped up in each other.
I loathe mornings, but with you,
waking up isn’t a struggle,
I rise to waking joyfully.
The closer you hold me,
the closer my spirit holds me close.
Even the exiled parts of me,
cannot resist the warmth between us.
Even the constant spinning of my mind
stops to savor the moment,
thoughts slowed to honeyed speed,
I am nothing but subsumed,
nothing but present
for this long-awaited pleasure.
I’ve held my breath for years,
and now I breath this in,
high on this feeling.