I am an open book. But most men can’t read.

I don’t want a gentleman.

I want a man whose faced his shadow and incorporated it into his open spaces. A man who’s faced his deepest desires and reconciled them. One who has understood what makes him empty, and how to fill himself up without eating women thinking this is the answer. It is not.

I don’t want a gentle man.

I want a tender man with edges on which I might sharpen my teeth. A tender man on whose edges I might whet my nails. A man tender who understands when it’s time to let my own shadow self move through the room without challenge.

I don’t want.

I have never wanted.

A polite man who uses politeness to mask truth. A polite man who hides from mouths inside of which only honesty lives. A man, polite, at the cost of his own spirit in a world that burns spirit into ash under the guise of civilized.

I have never.

Not once.

Ever wanted.

A refined man who worries more about his clothes than the state of his heart. A man refined, who has sandpapered every need and urge and animal instinct in service of society. A refined man who’s murdered his instinct to quell a society incapable of baring its teeth but in service of profit.

This is the only man against whom I wish to brush my mouth. The only man whom I might pull into my own body as though oxygen. The only one against whose bare shoulder I might rest my forehead. The one into whose neck I might share every secret I’ve been forced to hide.

“Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish from me,” wrote Audre Lorde.

As the Arabs say, wear this truth as an earring.

Until him, every man will be a long weekend pleasure.

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see how clearly he diminishes from himself?