He Says – Emma Bolden

You can’t be asexual if you walk
those boots like that, button & un-
that shirt like that, if that fabric

skirts the skin above your knee. He
says instead frigid, says instead that ice

queens the center of my body where
a feeling warm & soft for him
should reign. What a waste, what’s

the use of a body if you’re not going
to put it to some him’s use? Well.

There’s the well of sound that hymns
in my ear every morning, the way light
loosens the space between each

slat & I no longer blind can see
in front of me created a new day

which will linger, bloom noon &
gloom gloaming & take its lights
away when again the blue shows

up in its evening gown & I in my body
& my self are enough. How can I

explain that desire still wires its threads
through my veins & I am not still, I am
sung & making of myself a being not

beastlied but beautied by the kind
of stillness that begets kindness, that reflects

light off knife & spoon & so every
eached domestic object haloes into
the kind of glory that does not require

benediction by the ceremonies of body
& bed, the kind of beauty that is being

for the sake of being a part of the god of marvels
who slipped blossoms into the folds of a forest
& gave them petals that rose without sound.