Excerpts from the poem “Ace Of Heart” by Emilie Arnaud

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 I :

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.
Thus, 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 lily-white feather of a dove
And as these godlike birds of love, build a nest with me
In an abode tenderly fondled by the Foam-Born deity ?

Excerpt II :

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
The Schicchi 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 immemorially old merging rite
Give your osseous vessel of flesh, he will place a 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.”