When it is, most of the time it isn’t.

is it?

when you think it is and it really ain’t

you just have to say

“it is what it is.”

Listen to this

A virgin in her twenties doesn’t think about sex!

Shut your mouth, that girl is innocent.

Yet I find myself standing, after church

on a floor without a basement

two stepping at arms-length to Journey’s Small-Town Girl,

on fire.

He wore a sweater vest, and a bow tie, and said things like

“Your teeth are pretty, we should pray together sometime.”

I twirl beneath his arm rotisserie style to both

avoid affirming his offer

and get out of the weird straight-armed embrace

like pre-pubescent kids at a school dance.

These shoes two sizes too tight

My hair, blown in from hot mess express

And breasts strapped ‘neath a sports bra never made for layering hot ass modest church dresses

But titties are for two things: either tantalizing men or feeding babies, and I don’t have children

Because I’ve never had sex

So like a good Proverbs 31 woman, I’m hiding my love balloons

under Goodwill polyester and muted stripes

This bow-tie, sweater vest wearing, praying, mother—

child of God…chatters on in a tone that sounds like he’s got our lives planned out in his head

I making collard greens, our children are in Sunday school

And his mother makes me take her to Macys every first and last Wednesday of the month.

It’s crazy because

This morning

Sitting between the warm velvet legs of my antique sofa

I just thought about sex. What is that, you know?

Yall, I just want to know.

Somebody tell me. Rub the definition against my spine

Until some guy

Or girl

Can trail a brail with their finger tips and read into the depraved subtext that lives

In every pore, divot, curve, dip, slip, and slit

Of this 20 year old body

This body that has never tried on any other

Bodies

In this lifetime

Where is mine?

While watching the Kama Sutra Pareidolia in my X-rated coffee foam

There were these two junkyard dogs begging outside my apartment

The human in the situation shared his salami with the mutt

Who made the most noise

Silence has never been fed, and I’m red with the sentiments of

Of that Halden Hound’s hunger

“Where is mine!” my vagina barked to no one in particular.

You can imagine what a strange Sunday this was.

Sliding on stockings while salivating over something that’s supposed

to damn soul from salvation.

Even so

At twenty years old

It’s a shame for such desire to be wasted

But that seems very long ago now

As again I pirouette my modest sack clothed form

Beneath the increasingly sweaty arm of Mr. Bow Tie who likes my teeth.

I was pretty sweaty too, I guess.

All these pure bodies, bound by covenant to keep their legs closed

eyes up, hands folded and drink warm red punch while

Sardined down here

where the music is too soft to twerk to.

“is anything wrong?” he asked.

But what I heard was festival of invitation

My mind put me on a carousel where

He was Idris Elba and just got robbed of his shirt, pants, and dignity

Amen,

I had to make him feel a man again somehow!

Add him to my non-existent body count

Try on whatever he could do without

His sweat, flesh, wet, we don’t have to be done yet!

Dwele serenades us in the background, “it’s all yours now”

He said it, I didn’t. But what are we going to do about it?

I had to check myself

Answer his question before this headache of a Sunday night got any weirder

“yes I’m fine.”

But that woman was not fine, she was not that woman, and what everyone thought was

Was not.

Truth is, now, 5 years later

I’m a star child with dreadlocks, a passport, and a Rollercoaster fetish

Truth is I don’t want children, I’m vegan, and I study with a Guru

that never pretends to be anything he isn’t. I learn a lot from him

truth is I’ve had sex, and I was damn right to want it

and you know what?

it is what it is.

And 5 years ago it was a mask. Grins, lies, and borrowed beliefs buried

in my underwear.