I want to know the words
written on her thigh
but I don’t want her to quote them.
I want to trace their looping letters
with faintest fingertip.
I want to hear what makes her laugh
because that photo is so lovely.
I want to soak within her sillage;
the impression she must leave on a room.

But this potential match
is as close as we will likely ever get
for the first line of her bio
says everything she needs to say.
Swipe left if you voted Trump!!

The year is 2022 and I’ve learned to just
not even give it a try
defending decisions made in 2016,
agonizing as they were.
It doesn’t matter what my reasoning was.
It doesn’t matter how much I’ve grown since then,
doesn’t matter how much the world has changed since then
because I shouldn’t have to hide myself anymore.
I did what I thought was best
and I won’t back down from that
even if I’m ultimately proven wrong.

But if I’m upfront with this, I’m unmatched.
If it comes out later,
then was I ever really honest with her?
Or to myself?

Maybe if we were to instead meet in person 
I’d stand a little more of a fighting chance
with us getting to know each other a little more,
discovering ways we are not so dissimilar–
not that they’d override political incompatibility
if that’s what we eventually discover.
This way, I’d at least feel
not quite so lonely and
written off by society,
like a book judged by its cover.

But that is a coin left spinning on the table.
On one side, beauty shines in uncompromised persons.
On the other lies the travesties
of unchallenged perspectives
and unchanged trajectories.