Classification of Terms

         In the 22^ndedition of the Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC), released in
        2003, asexuality was given its own subclass, which has been discontinued in every
        subsequent edition.

306.76 — Sexual orientation

            306.762 —[                    ]—If nothing else, the flattened grass in the shape
                                                         of a word. In the long constriction of time,
                                                         memory is a flushed face turned to the sky.
                                                         Praise the archive of the body, how the sun dips
                                                         pools of amber behind my eyes & how
                                                         I remember what I cannot yet understand.
                                                         Because I held my breath until I feared air
                                                         more than water, because once an X marked
                                                         border & boundary. Body the lockbox. Body
                                                         the slipped stitch & the spare. Before my birth,
                                                         the pleasure that made me was the collision
                                                         of unmooned waves. Refusal is a kind of choosing—
                                                         I am because I am not. Body the undertow.
                                                                                    She wants me & the wanting
                                                         is enough. So easily the center of the image
                                                         sharpens like a tongue. Once, I touched myself
                                                         & felt nothing but my own fingers moving
                                                         as if around the lip of a wine glass—poised,
                                                         waiting, on the fine edge of noise.