Size / / /

I am the prologue, a symptom. See:
aliens turn sympathetic when moonstruck;
the villain is redeemed via softened heart
or a flashback to before loss broke it;
grouches get coaxed into caring then dating;
brutal monsters are people too, if they love
properly, since friendship is just a stopgap;
the frigid bitch, proven flawed, is thawed;
and of course even robots inevitably learn
what is this thing as they are humanised.

I thought my prologue was the confused teen,
the years wasted waiting to catch up, pretending,
wondering if she could ever become human,
her heart a stone unfeeling uncaring unflinching
despite her love for family, friends and life,
just because she could not feel attraction.
Thinking it past, now a numbered chapter,
confident and comfortable, I introduced myself.

No, not aromatic. No, just single, not single-cell.

They asked me what planet was I from
because all strangenesses are the same:
The one where they have neither women nor men
but aliens who are both and neither?
Because romance's opposite is sociopathy:
When will the police catch you?
Because I guess they never saw that interview:
But you don't have a brilliant scientific mind?

Because I was an inner conflict to resolve they
hit me with well-meaning, well-aimed insults,
got under my skin with tropes and diagnoses,
opened me up to see what scenes I was missing,
what had gone wrong in mother's womb.
I wasn't human, I wasn't human yet,
but they could fix me, they'd conclude
the prologue I didn't know I still was.

Even robots learn to be human.
That's the story they like best.

So they put metal in my head,
filling all the holes they said
they saw with wires clipped
to neurons receiving their scripts
and programs from transmitting
terminals permitting
manual override lest
malfunction means I regress
to that repressed, truncated state
and choose to leave my soul mate.

I was the prologue, a plight. See:
the circuitry installed to allow humanity;
requited love the reward for surviving my story;
and their happily-ever-after overwriting me.




Penny Stirling edits and embroiders in Western Australia. Their speculative fiction and poetry can be found in Lackington's, Interfictions, Heiresses of Russ, and other venues. For more of Penny's aromantic nonfiction visit their website or follow them on Twitter.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
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