22.“No, I’m not gay. No, I’m not straight, and I’m sure as hell not bisexual, damn it! I am whatever I am when I am it, loving whoever you are when the stars shine and whoever you’ll be when the sun rises. Yes, I like girls. Yes, I like boys.
Yes, I like boys who like boys; I like girls who wear toys and girls who don’t; girls who don’t call themselves girls; crew cuts or curls and that really bad hair phase in between. I like steam rising from the body of a one-night stand; I like holding hands for three months before kissing; I like wishing your body was Saturn, my body thousand rings wrapped around you. You wanted to be a Buddhist nun once; last night you held my cervix between your fingers. I thank gods I don’t believe in for your changing. Tell me we’ll be naming our children “Beautiful” and nothing else.
Tell Barbie she can go now. Tell GI Joe to put his gun down and find a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a girl-boy-friend; fuck it, y’all, GI Joe just needs a friend. I mean, he’s plastic and not even the kind of plastic that bends. I want to bend in a thousand directions like the sun does, like love does, like time stopped so the hands of the clock could hold each other; and we held each other like I held these words for too many years on the tip of my tongue.
I am my mother’s daughter. I am midnight sun. You can find me on the moon waxing and waning, my heart full of pebbles, every single one begging “love me, love me, love me, whoever I am, whoever I become. Love me, love me, love me.”
