To Poetry, Mirrors, and Myself Shay Martin-Jones + Kiera Smith

Writing by Shay Martin-Jones Photography by Kiera Smith

TO POETRY, MIRRORS, AND MYSELF

In my story, it begins with people, with bodies, falling apart and building back together—a total reimagining, brought forth by inconceivable destruction of self-understanding and identity. In many Queer stories, it starts and ends like this: falling into ourselves over time, picking up pieces of our identity along the way and reshaping it at every rest stop. Self-reflection is perpetual.

Three years ago, I woke up from a dream and was infatuated with my best friend (which could be to say that I woke up from one dream and entered into another). I was 18, proudly bisexual, and caught in my own mind, which was somewhere out of this atmosphere, closer to the moon than the ground. It was the first time in my life I had ever considered myself to be romantically interested in a boy. Spending time with him made me warm, and I wanted to be as close to him as possible—romance was the normal next step, a way to level up the friendship, to immortalize it.

Of course I would have a crush on him, I thought, I want to be a part of his life for as long as possible; I want to spend my days talking, laughing and existing with him. A relationship would be so similar to our already growing and happy friendship but closer somehow.

In a way, this newfound crush felt safe to me. I could create an idealized future in my head in which I could have a long-term relationship with a man without having to interact with or pursue any strange ones. My best friend became a safety net, allowing me to conceptualize that I could achieve a domestic life with a man because this one was kind, loving and knew me well. I would not have to have sex with him because he was asexual, I would not have to fit the mold of “woman” perfectly because he was also Queer and would never dream of forcing me into it.

I thought it was ideal because I would, in practice, only have to be his friend but in a romantic way. There was always an undertone of discomfort in this infatuation that I could never quite place—an aversion to the reality outside of my world of daydreams. I knew, realistically, he would never reciprocate, and this fact made me feel even safer somehow. This was the basis of my first (and final) crush on a man.

My feelings for women came much earlier than that. At nine, I was already flirting with girls and playing house with them, kissing in secret. At 13, I had my first crush. It was passionate, charged, romantic—everything a barely teenaged Queer kid needed in a fling— and she lived approximately 3,800 miles away.

Before we ever dated, we spent years somewhere between friendship and romance; she sent me birthday cards with love letters and playlists inside, all sprayed with her perfume. When we began dating in my late teenage years, I sent her a map of the night sky of the day we met and clumsily written love poetry. Relationships with women have always felt natural to me—something gentle, endlessly romantic and dreamy. They are the only relationships I have actively, shamelessly pursued—even at the risk of writing embarrassingly cliche odes with badly translated Portuguese dying at the end of stanzas. Still, I left the door to my identity slightly ajar; men were an after-thought but a necessity, people I figured I would keep in my sexuality as a possibility but never a promise. Just in case.

I would have never admitted to myself when I was younger, or even a year ago, that I was afraid to question my bisexuality. I told myself I simply had a heavy preference for non-men while only finding celebrity men, and explicitly unattainable men, attractive. In my mind, a relationship with a man felt like an inevitable, domestic trap that I knew I was going to fall into regardless of my own desires.

I felt, and still often feel, that my worth was contingent on how palatable and desirable I was to the male gaze. It became difficult for me to understand the difference between whether I desired men or whether I wanted them to desire me to prove something to myself. Before recently, I never paused to ask myself if I could ever be in a happy, fulfilling and long-term relationship with a man. The thought had never occurred to me. I had a fear of addressing, of seeing myself. I still do.

I only actively sought out relationships with non-men, but I always fathomed that in the future I would encounter the perfect man who would fulfill all of my needs—emotionally, physically and

Model Annabelle Asali

TO POETRY, MIRRORS AND MYSELF

romantically; he would have no flaws or else he would be cast aside. All of his micro-politics and opinions would need to align with mine—anything less was selling myself short, after all.

(This particularity, of course, wasn’t present in my interests in nonmen. I found slight disagreements endearing and minor flaws bearable in their cases. I pegged this to simply be because I had more to relate to with non-men.)

It took me a year to realize that my crush on my best friend was never a real one but something I had convinced myself of out of desperation. I wanted to be desired by a man, yes, but part of me also wanted to desire them despite the discomfort I felt. It was easy to delude myself into thinking wanting a long-term, close friendship with him was something more than that, and it felt fun to delve into this so-called crush with others. It was exciting. It was safe. It made me smile, for a time.

This crush was the product of compulsory heterosexuality, or comphet, a side effect of misogynistic structures that teaches the individual that heterosexual attraction is inherent or without question. Comphet is a phenomenon where non-men—especially lesbians—have heterosexuality forced upon us by the patriarchy so habitually that we have trouble differentiating between our own desires and the desires we are “meant” to have. After all, as nonmen, our ability to remain desirable to men is placed at the center of our value—being attractive to men is to be worthy of respect. My “attraction” to men was assumed, something I viewed as indisputable and never delved into because, without it, I would be considered less valuable.

However, after I researched compulsory heterosexuality and immersed myself in lesbian literature and theory, for the first time in my life my sexuality became impossible to hide from. An identity crisis consumed me—it was all I thought, talked and wrote about. I began questioning every aspect of who I was; the door was torn wide open.

Behind it, I found myself.

In the past few months, I have found solace in language that goes unspoken, words that go without witness: a journal in my desk drawer, the notes app on my phone, the drafts on my Twitter account. These private spheres, unread confessions, have become mirrors that I glance into when I am capable of addressing myself. They have become the mirrors I hide from when I cannot. At the present moment, there are four drafted Tweets where I refer to myself as a lesbian and one where I refer to myself as non-binary.

One draft from two months ago reads: “Hey, I think I am a lesbian.”

One from a few weeks ago: “Okay, fine. I’ll say it. I am non-binary.”

I left them unsent, hanging in the balance, an acknowledgment of the self to myself and a not-quite-secret for everyone else.

I have not written these words publicly because I am afraid to. Recently, I have kept most declarations of my identity quiet, non-existent or indirect. “I am a lesbian” became substituted by “I am not attracted to men.” “I am non-binary” became substituted by a quiet and easy-to-miss addition of “they” to the pronouns I keep in my bio. It is as though I am almost at the end of a race—just about to touch the finish line—and I fold for no reason at all.

In the now, I am a non-binary lesbian—somewhere between womanhood and nothingness, and endlessly in love with Queer people. I have found, in recent times, it is easier to describe my identity in the abstract: my gender can be encapsulated by an image of a dress on fire, poems threaded into its seams. To be non-binary, to me, is to rip apart the dress’s stitches — its poetry — and find commonplace in between the line breaks. At times, I am the dress, burning: this inaccessible poetry, lines breaking into myself. To be non-binary is to be an arsonist-turned-artist, to form a beautiful and intangible poetic thing from ash and destruction, then hang it on my bedroom wall.

To be a lesbian is a saving grace, a redefining of self-worth, of my body, of my home. It is to build upon myself, to recenter my own desires and fall endlessly in love with the Sapphic. It is roses coated in glitter, lips dripping gold, and vibrant, feathered wings.

TO POETRY, MIRRORS AND MYSELF

It is to fold cliche love poems into the seams of the dress, to write an ode to the woman I sewed it for, to draw tiny hearts in the line breaks. At times, I am the woman I made it for: this cliche poetry, lines forming into myself. To be a lesbian is to be a self-portrait of someone holding a mirror, to invite a poem into my bed and press kisses into its words and lay its metaphors across my chest, tenderly.

To be both non-binary and a lesbian is total liberation.

Growing up has taught me that I am uncertain. My sense of self can be elusive and intangible — in recent times, my identity has become something I am actively discovering and forging myself, a sort of flowery and infinitely more gay Frankenstein situation.

This is to say that I do not know who I am some days, and that can be okay. This is to say that I can hold pride in my identity, in who I am in the now, and still be toiling through restructuring who that is. This is to say to past, present and future Queer me that now is what matters most. All the other cracks in the mirror and doors left ajar will fall into place later. And then, inevitably, you will see yourself.

Shay Martin-Jones is a student at the University of Southern California currently pursuing a degree in Creative Writing.

Kiera Smith is an Los Angeles-born and based photographer who specializes in portraits and editorial photography. She enjoys graphic design on the side. Kiera studies Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation at the University of Southern California.