play pretend

teach me to want you, so I can feel.
teach me to want you, so I can feel the
normality, probability, breakability of the real
honest-to-god skin, no ephemeral sin, but only
touchability of hurt gets through

so far. teach me to want you, so I can feel
safe in a normful of predictability, full of
myself escaping from the fear of confines
into their soft, soft embrace, in your arms.

teach me to want you. alternatives
are frightening; the motives, the reasons, the
lighting that never strikes - the long stretches
of time, when this not-wanting is quite enough, when

I learn to be wanted, that dubious enjoyment
of having breasts, of having thighs
but as adept at being desired
my wanting is wanting. neglected, as a
matter of acts never commited
or commited without the feel, the zeal, the
even lacklustre resemblance of
passion, I'm

playing at this, playing you, acting
my first, single, best performance, only
for whom, and for what - not questions unanswered
but questions unasked.