Once upon a time, the boy I love swam out to me, blanched, and turned around to swim back in. I didn’t understand it then. Now I do.

If I ever have a son, I am never going to circumcise him. And I mean I am going to let anyone with a knife get anywhere near that little boy for any reason other than saving his life, only over my dead body.

If I ever have a son, I am going to teach him that his body is beautiful, and sacred and worth protecting. I am not going to listen to stupid third wave feminism stupid telling me that really boys are taught they are the center of the universe, starting and ending with their dicks. I am going to teach my child that there are many things more worthy of love in this world than power is, and I am going to teach him to receive all of those gifts.

And then someday, I am going to let go and watch him wander away from me to explore this world on his own. I am going to let him discover for himself that there is a difference between the desire to touch something, and the desire to harm it. I am going to do my best to teach him that the point of asking for consent is not to doubt himself, but to invite his sexual partners to trust themselves the way I hope I have taught him to do.

There are very many things about men I did not know until I watched the boy I loved, and learned. I learned too late, perhaps, but I learned.

Someday maybe I am going to see this boy again, if I get very lucky, and do my best to be very good, in all the ways I never considered it might be important for a woman to do. I am not going to let him think for one second that his body is something to be ashamed of. I am not going to let him confuse my fear of the harm men’s bodies have done me, for a rejection of what his body wanted to do. I am going to love him whole, if I can. And let him grieve the places that can never be fixed, where I cannot bring healing. I am going to become the kind of woman who can do this for a man that I love. There are no cultural scripts to enforce this, just hints and whispers hidden in lasting tropes and circular stories. I am going to do my best to interpret and enact them. That is all that I can do.

Once upon a time, the boy dreamed I wanted to be covered in rose petals and kissed until I cried, and I said yes inside the echo chamber of my mind but no one heard me. Once upon a time, the boy thought lust and the urge to do violence were the exact same thing, and I did not know this so I could not set him straight. Once upon a time.

I wake up shivering with lust in my bed with stratified covers surrounded by candles and goddess statues. I wake up dripping sunlit wanting for a man I have not seen in a year and a half, and might not see again. I wake up and there are places in me my vibrators cannot touch and I don’t mean places built of skin, but I try. I wake up and write about sex because fat disabled women are not supposed to want sex but I do.

I wake up and boys become men who were never taught to buy themselves candles or sex toys or workbooks about self-love or take classes about pleasure. I wake up and I want him here with me in the warm wet dark where it is safe. I told him, I forget you are a man, meaning of course, I forget you are a monster. Because you make me feel safe from the monsters.

I wake up and I want to kiss him and I want him to fuck me against every available surface in this house, and. I wake up and women like me are not supposed to feel passion, what do I do? I wake up and I was born wrong, born wanting space at the center of my people’s story, does that make me a monster. I wake up, and someone hurt him, and I could make it better, I think, but he will not let me. I wake up, and what is a man, anyway?

I wake up, writing about love/death/suicide/change/sex because I believe it is important to transcribe the truth as I see it. I thought we agreed on that.

I wake up screaming out for him but no one can hear me.

I wake up and my body is changing, what I want for my life is changing, he changed everything for me and now I really am a mermaid, left to try to be a human being in a world in which he went off and married some other girl. A girl who could talk. A girl who never had a tail.

I wake up and he thinks sex is something he must give and give, and not something a woman can give in return. I wake up and it is a hard, empty, concrete world we have created, and there are more butterflies left in this world but for how long?

I wake up.