"Phases", By Kevin Kantor And Sienna Burnett Poem by Nameless Anonymously

I just got a Tumblr.
I do not understand Tumblr.
Don't really know what a note is.
Don't really like the feeling of being followed by strangers.
Why do they call them followers?
Can't we just be friends?

I have eighty-one followers, mostly strangers, and they send me messages that say,
"Thanks for the reblog, but what's with all that feminist spam on your feed? "
I did not respond.
"You were so pretty with your long hair.
Did you really need a gay haircut? "
I did not respond.
"My grandmother, who's been taking care of me since I was a kid, found out I was gay, but she keeps telling me I'm going through a phase.
It's really getting to me.
What should i do?
P.S. I like your poetry."

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 a kiss on the cheek and both of out mothers swoon.
I am seven years old and leaving a play date from Michael's house.
I give him a kiss on the cheek, and his mother says, "Now, that's enough of-"

Phase, verb: to introduce in gradual stages.
I was twenty-two years old when I began dating a woman for the first time.
She pulled me in from the starless darkness I'd been drifting through.
And I watched as all my insecurities burned up in her atmosphere.
Her name is -.

Phase, verb: to remove in gradual stages.
In high school, I knew this painter.
A cocksure comet with a confident, smarter-than-you smile that showed no signs of burning out.
A hopeful romantic who always wanted to exchange portraits for poems.
And I'm afraid, if I write him one now, it will sound too much like the suicide note that he did not leave.
Signed -.

Phase, verb: the process of waxing and waning.
It takes the moon twenty-nine days to orbit the Earth.
Appearing to us only in fractions of it's full self.

Phase, verb: to illuminate the darkness.
And what are we really ever doing, if not constantly trying to find a light?
When they tell you your love is just a phase, tell them you do not 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 learning to love in someone else's shadow, like it deserves to be black-hole-swallowed because it burns too bright too look at, do not let them.

Do not align yourself with someone else's access 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 ever tries to tell you that you love wrong, if anyone waits for you to backwards become yourself, treats your queerness as anything other than the infinite universe of beautiful possibilities that it is, tell them that you're sorry that they'd rather live in darkness than learn to love your light.
Learn to love your flicker, flash of radiation.
Learn to love your full moon.

And even on days when you hang just a sliver in the sky, when it feels like you're holding on for dear life to this rock, like you are 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 in 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.
P.S. we here you, loud and clear.