In all of my recent dreams I’m kissing girls

Jess Lydia
Feb 5, 2024
3 min read

A few poems about figuring out your sexuality later in life (or what feels like later than everyone else)

So I'm 22 and I've only just recently come to terms with the fact that I'm gay. For a long time I've struggled with wanting male validation and attention, and battling with compulsory heterosexuality. I wanted boyfriends because I wanted to know I made the cut not because it was what I actually desired.

IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW

Now that I think about it I was always this way

I naturally cupped his face and wanted his hair to grow longer so that I could plait it or tuck it behind his ear.

I rejected everything that made him stereo-typically manly.

I wanted so desperately for him to see me through the female gaze and I wished to bring him flowers and write him poetry

And sometimes, when I really wasn't thinking, my hands would move around his chest in hope that there would be breasts there

I think all this time I've been playing a role not written for me,

But one expected of me

I believe at twenty one, I am finally figuring out

That all I really want is to love a woman

REAL LOVE

I want to cry

I feel love

I feel it how it is meant to be felt

I was wrong for so long

I feel relief

I've always thought I was missing something

Or something about me was just wired wrong

Maybe I expected too much

Or was too damaged

Why didn't you love me

I was wrong

Why didn't I love you

Why did it feel as though you were never going to be good enough

I feel the flames now

Nothing was missing, I was just looking in the complete wrong place

THE WHOLE WORLD

To put my palm flat on the small of her back

To glide my index finger down her spine

To kiss a trail down her neck, and drip my toungue back up to her earlobe

To let my fingers dance with her fingers

To trace the outline of her breast

To make love with a woman is to make love with the world

SUMMER OF LOVE

I remember, in the summer,

that she would come and see me in the half an hour she had after having tea at her aunts house and the start of football practice.

It was a lovely half an hour, despite it always feeling like 15 minutes or less.

By the time we'd talked about our days and hugged each other for a prolonged period of time, kissed each other many times in many places and laid next to eachother,

my head half on her arm and half on her chest as we lie on my bed,

I’m nestled,

my hand low on her chest, moving up and down with her breath.

Half an hour of her voice and her smile and her eyes.

A half an hour that feels so much shorter because there is no amount of time long enough for me to have had enough of her.

In this weekly half an hour I discovered what falling in love is really like.

It is slow and gentle.

It’s pushing thirty minutes to thirty three, thirty four, thirty five.

It’s the repetition of 'I don’t want to go'

and 'I don’t want you to go'

as she puts her coat and shoes back on and we walk down the stairs and open the front door and I wave to her as she drives away and I close the front door and I feel sad the thirty minutes is up,

but happy that it happened

and happy knowing she made it happen

and that I was worth a thirty minute out of the way detour,

and excited that it will happen again,

and secure in that if it didn’t she would be equally as sad about that as I would be.

It was nice to know that I was worth effort

but that my worth did not deteriorate if that effort was not made.

I’ve never felt that way.

It was nice, also, to know I was loved enough for one to make the effort

but that the love did not deteriorate if that effort was not made.

I have never been loved that way.

Everything is new with Meg.