Your Face

[primeideal]

 This is for the QUILTBAG competition on poetree , from the perspective of a speaker who's somewhere between questioning and asexual.

Second poem I've written in a short span of time that got more metrically regular as it went. Not sure what to make of that.

I have seen your face

And it's fine as faces go.

There are pretty faces, ugly faces

And you're closer to the latter--

But please don't take this the wrong way.

Of course you won't.

Of course you'll never see this, anyway.

Which is almost the point.

 

I do not understand the love

The storytellers write about,

Even that you write about.

So I don't see where falling comes along.

You carry me up a spiral staircase,

Every round binding me tighter to you--

And only when you let go do I fall.

 

I don't see what I'm missing.

To trip distracted because I have seen 

A pretty face? To move face against face?

Or to take off my clothing and to move

Body against body? There's some appeal

For some, I guess. I don't see how it's real.

 

It isn't like I mind if people seal

Their love with kisses. Only if they steal

All of the words that I could use to grope

My way through this confusion, in blind hope

I could explain what I am mourning for.

If you're a blur of pixels, nothing more,

Too ephemeral to be called a friend,

Screenshots that shouldn't surprise when they end,

What is the verb I'm looking for? I care

About your words, miss them when you're not there.

Were you a friend? Is it okay I'm crying

Over you? If it's not I'll stop. I'm trying.

 

But you're not here to tell me otherwise.

You haven't seen my hair, my mouth, my eyes

(I look for you. I've seen yours.) I don't mind

If in my story I happen to find

Nobody I would bind my heart and touch

With. I'm not looking for lovers, as such.

And all that's fine. Perhaps I will, somehow.

I don't yet know. It's just, again--and now--

I care, at least, but cannot in return

Expect loyalty. You'd think I would learn.