Sex

A poem about learning myself.

I didn’t go looking for a man.
I went looking for a pulse … my own.
And somehow, I found it standing across from someone
who smelled like bleached sheets and cigarettes
and had no business teaching me anything
Except maybe how to leave.

He wasn’t the point.
He was the pause.
The unexpected quiet
where I finally heard myself think.

Everyone else spent years telling me who to be …
small, polite, grateful,
easy to manage, easy to forgive,
easy to ignore.
I was raised to be a lesson,
not a person.

But standing there with him,
I realized I didn’t know what I liked
because no one ever asked
and I never thought I was allowed to answer.

That’s when it hit me:
I wasn’t learning from him.
I was learning from me.

He treated my boundaries like instructions,
And suddenly I remembered
I had boundaries.
He waited for my words,
And suddenly I remembered
I had a voice.
He didn’t take anything from me,
and suddenly I remembered
I had something worth protecting.

This wasn’t about him being safe.
It was about me finally recognizing
what safety feels like
when I’m the one choosing it.

I didn’t find sex.
I found language.
I found permission.
I found the version of myself
I’d been trying to grow into
since the day the world told me not to.

He wasn’t the lesson.
He was the moment I realized
I was ready to learn myself.