Kevin Kantor & Sienna Burnett - "Phases" (CUPSI 2015)

I just got a Tumblr.

I don’t understand Tumblr.

I don’t know what a “note” is.

Don’t really like the feeling of being “followed.”

By strangers.

Why do they call them followers

instead of friends?

I have 81 followers

Mostly strangers

And they send me messages that say:

“Funny, you don’t look like a feminist”

I didn't respond

“Your septum piercing is sexy.”

I didn’t respond.

“My grandmother who has taken care of me since I was a little kid found out I’m gay

but she keeps telling me I’m just going through a phase. It’s really getting to me. What should I do? PS

I love your poems.”

Phase, noun
a distinct period in a process of change or development

I am seven-years old and leaving a play date from Samantha’s house. I give her kiss on the cheek and our mother’s swoon.

I am seven-years old and leaving a play date from Michael’s house. I give him a kiss on his cheek and his mother says

“Now that’s enough of … “

Phase, verb
To introduce in gradual stages

I am 22-years old and I am dating a woman for the first time

Wondering where I had ever been before this
Wondering how it took me so long to see it
her name is
—

Phase, verb
To remove in gradual stages

I spent most of high school with a painter
A hopeful romantic who always wanted to exchange portraits for poems

I’m afraid if I write it now it will sound too much like the suicide note he didn’t leave.

Signed,
—

Phase, verb
The process of waxing and waning

The moon takes 29 days to orbit around the earth
Appearing to us in fractions of its full self

Phase, verb
Illuminating the darkness

how can we exist outside of a phase
if being human
means constantly trying to find the light

To the boy
Our reply

When they tell your love is just a phase

tell them you don’t like the word just

you are not just anything

Do not bury your demons on the dark side of the moon

Instead
Phase hate out of your sky

When they treat your love like an eclipse

Like it means living in someone else’s shadow

Like it must be swallowed by darkness because it burns too bright to look at

Do not let them

Do not align yourself with their axis of expectation

Do not fight your own pull

Trust in your own gravity

We are closer to the stars than they will ever be

And if anyone tells you that you love wrong

If anyone waits for you to backwards become yourself

tell them you’re sorry that they’d rather live in darkness
than learn to love your light

Learn to love your flicker flash irradiation

Learn to love you full moon

And even on the days when you hang just a sliver in the sky

holding on for dear life to this rock like you’re in a death grip tango with the sun

Hold on

Because I’ve seen people I love starve themselves out of the sky

Her name is Sarah

Signed, Andrew

My starry-eyed girl and her constellation kisses

My man on the moon and his ghostly glow

I still don’t understand Tumblr

But I consider us friends

Thank you for sending us your secret satellite

We promise it did not get lost in space

PS

We hear you

loud and clear.