Don’t Fall In Love With My Body, Fall In Love With The Way I Think

I don’t want you to see me across the room and imagine your fingertips tracing my skin, or your lips on my mouth. I don’t want you to talk to me with wandering eyes, scanning over every part of me. I don’t want you to whisper in my ear, to coax me, to tell me that you want to be closer, to get to know me when we’re alone.

I don’t want to be your object of desire. I don’t want to be your challenge, your pursuit, your chase. I don’t even want to be a person, a physical entity for you to have and to hold. See, I’m not interested in how your hands long to feel my hips, how your kiss wants to land on my mouth, how your eyes want to search over every cell and curve.

I don’t want you to fall in love with my body, I want you to fall in love with who I am.

I want you to fall in love with my mind, with the way I think. I want you to fall in love with the words I say, with the unspoken lines of poetry forever being written in my brain. I want you to fall in love with the way I tell stories, or daydream when it’s quiet and the morning sun is still rising. I want you to fall in love with the way I argue, with the sentences I craft, with the thoughts that are constructing and deconstructing in my head.

I want you to fall in love with the way I feel. With the way I process. With the way I see the world, and the potential we have to see it together. I want you to fall in love with the most authentic part of me—the part that is hidden and careful and passionate and wild. The part of me that shows who I am beyond the realm of my physical self.

I want you to fall in love with my soul, my heart, my brain. I want you to fall in love with the way I see the world, with the way I think because I will forever be more than a body, more than two eyes, two legs.

I want you to know the pain I’ve encountered, the demons I’ve fought, the battles I’ve won and the challenges I’ve overcome. I want you to know what makes me feel alive, what music I can’t stop dancing to, what books I can read over and over again.

I want you to fall in love with my vocabulary, with the tone of my voice, with the conversations I can have with you about the strangest of topics—conversations where we both lose track of time and place.

I want you to fall in love with the emotional, the spiritual, the sensual realm that exists beyond my skin.

I want to close my eyes and lay next to you, not awaiting your touch, but listening to the silence before your mouth speaks words to me. Before questions whisper from your lips, filling the space between us with a longing to dig deeper, to discover more.

I don’t want you to fall in love with the way I look, with the curves of a body that will never be permanent. I want you to fall in love with me, with who I am—what I say, believe, feel.

I want you to fall in love with the way I think.