People partake in foreign rituals of intimacy,
in frenzied motions of desire,
and I am without—
hesitating at inquiries of attraction,
wincing at touch tinged with desire,
perpetually pretending to ignore murmurs of a hunger I do not know—
my interest in a love Like That™,
in a union with physicality as a contingent factor,
never extending past curiosity.

Regardless of precaution and dissent,
my vessel becomes a sexual object on which to enact desire,
from which to extract desire.

Attraction assumed implicit.

How can a love Like That™ be called “the pinnacle of human connection” if all I’ve ever felt from its presence is isolation?

I am incorporeally bound to the fuzzy-haired boy who saved me from the deep,
to the ocean-eyed boy holding me amidst the waves,
to the girls and unnamed echoes of myself,
whispers of the truth in the depths of uncertainty.

There is no constraint,
simply love for all souls shining from within their vessels.

If love Like That™ is truly all that matters,
as I have been told all my life,
I will never love,
not Like That™.