Learning Curves: A Poetry Collection

2 Months Past Curfew

I feel like there's no winning for me.
I do not understand why every person on this earth desires sex so deeply.

I either lead with being Asexual and get rejected off the bat
Without anyone bothering to know me on a deeper level,
Or people do get to know me on a deeper level
But leave once they find out my body isn't a vessel for their pleasure.
Whatever I do I lose.

People can claim to love you, claim you are their "favorite person,"
Yet can walk away so easily when they don't get what they want.

I just want to be loved with no expectations.
Why is my body an insurance factor of our relationship?
Why is my identity so easily forgotten and discounted?
Why do I have to push myself out of my comfort zone to be loved?

I want love but this shit happens and I go back to hating it –
Hating men, hating love hating the fact that my hormones
Don't act up in the same way that yours do.

I know it was more than that.
You needed a better reason to leave and I presented one to you.
You knew your excuses of not taking me on dates, not affording the flowers, doing nothing
Weren't going to work.

I think you were waiting for me to realize your laziness and leave.
I did and I don't regret that part.
When I ask for flowers and you ask for my body, those gifts are not equal.
I gave you everything but the final destination yet I never got a petal. That is not just.

My communication was not verbal, I recognize my mistake in that.
But neither was yours.
You made the promises of grand gestures, yet we were in your bed by eight every night.
I wanted to be romanced, you wanted to be fucked, that is not the same.

Maybe if I had walked away on Valentine's Day I wouldn't be typing this all up right now.
My body is still pure in the eyes of the Lord but filth by those of the church.
Spring has sprung but the roses have wilted.
I never wanted happily ever after but I deserved Happily.
Now I need to start over.

How funny would it be to call you up and say "April fools!"
Like us breaking up on the first of April was some happy irony.
How funny would it be for you to say
"I was just joking about not being able to take you on dates.
Let's go to Joshua Tree and stargaze right now."
How funny would it be if this never happened 
The apps didn't exist, fifty miles was too far, we were still blissfully ignorant
Of each other's existence?
How funny would it be if we unfollowed each other on both our accounts
And stopped watching the other's lives from our spams?
How funny.

But this isn't a joke and it's not April Fools
And you didn't want to take me on dates, and we're still loitering.

I hate how every single thing you said tastes bitter now.
I hate how being someone's favorite person
Is the worst thing I could ever imagine happening to me.
I hate how someone saying they're in love with me makes me want to vomit.

Because I wasn't your favorite, and you weren't in love with me
And now I have to sit in that realization, and pick myself up again like all the times before.

Because I'm so sweet and innocent, because my trauma makes me a target
Because I attract emotional unavailability and try to fix it while grappling with my own.
Because I had absentee parents and now I parentify everyone else.
Because you were not my person and I stayed two months past curfew. (April 2023)