Both of these extracts give an overview of my asexual and aromantic journey, but focus more specifically on the beginning of it all – from the depths of internalized aphobia, writing is a tool of healing and liberation, paving a path towards self-love and acceptance…

Excerpt 1 :

And will you vow to stay
If I let you plant a kiss
Where I tend to carve my way
Out of the mind abyss ?
If I let you haunt the curse
My hearted walls indwelling
Would it cure it or make worse
What since a youngling
To quell I have been striving ?
How could we ever start anew
When you keep on offering me arum
Knowing I could never complete you,
Your fragrant words I left-handedly return
With yellow carnations for the spurned yearn.
And will I bide in the throes of disappointed love ?
A lachrymal light in the Stygian shade, painted by Danby;
Would you ever gift me the feather of a dove ?
Niveous as the name-inweaving day so we could hopefully
Build a nest tenderly fondled by the Foam-Born beauty ?

Excerpt 2 :

Himeros was beastly hungry,
In the perfervid hunt of victuals,
Wolfed the butterflies inside my belly
Rough-hewn me as one of his sacrificial rituals;
And there, god-made were his Name
The butterfly swallower, lechery devourer
This Saturnian bite that turned me to shame
Though on healed skin, had never felt sourer.
Still flesh eaters would offer meat
In the hope to fill me whole
For the carnal and vestal to meet
So I would never feel the hole
“Just take a bite
As Eve our foremother did
Join the heaven feast, immemorial merging rite
Put the fig in your hope chest; taken in as men bid.
Just have a taste
As the apostles of the Christ had
Do not let your fresh bread be a waste
Nor your fane forevermore white lily-clad.”

While the first two extracts delve more specifically into my inner struggle with acceptance, this one is rather centered on self-awareness, always with the subtle use of mythology…

Excerpt 3 :

Still I wonder if an arrow
Can purposefully miss a heart
Or if the hand holding the bow
Has been the same from the start;
Gold-coated in the fingers of a manlike God
Far from being King Midas', a winged youth
Aims its sharp tip, with a mischievous nod
Fires a burning desire longing to be soothed.
From planets-named parents, Cupid the cunning,
Bestower of the sting of love,
On blemished skin is leaving
A token of devotion, may you be from Earth or above.
Dwells a past in the depth of every wound
Moon-shaped and crossing my heart
Was the one bearer of my bloom,
Left with a pang never to depart
Mistaken as ominous, harken the herald
Delivered by a shaft ever thought blunt
To realize yourself being mosaically-assembled
Since she came, stung and left for the hunt;
Dawns the daystar, I have borne the storm brunt.