Once, I was a twig of a thing,
a scrawny, scrappy slender being.
A sapling. A stalk. A vine.
My body rhymed with the y-axis,
with flagpole and street lamp and pine.
Perhaps I thought it would never change,
confusing my self for my form.
Perhaps I was afraid it would change,
my ideas of loving myself so small.
And now, look at me, a tree-ripened pear.
A cumulous cloud. A peony.
My body rhymes with river bends
and nautilus, helix, anemone.
And I am more me than I’ve
ever been—as lush on the inside
as I am to the eye, rounded
and softened and carved.
How sweet these hours when
I love what is here—
which is to say when I love
the change itself,
these hours when I wade
into the mystery, not clinging
to the way things used to be,
these amorous hours
when I revel in my curves
with eyes as forward as a new lover’s hands,
astonished by my own becoming.