Once they were slender,
this arm, this waist,
and I loved them
when they were slender.
Though that’s a lie.
I did not love them.
Never once did I think
they were slender enough.
But I was happier then
with my body, wasn’t I?
When it was lean and smooth
and strong? No. It’s a lie.
I was cruel to that body,
and pushed it and starved it
and glared at it in the mirror
with hateful, critical eyes.
It’s so strange that the body
I’m learning to love is the one
that once disgusted me.
This one with its strange roll
around my waist, this one with its
thick upper arms that stun me
in photos. This one with its
marbled flesh. Is it true
I am learning to love this body?
Perhaps it’s more true
I’m learning to love the one
who is learning to love this body.
How gentle it is, this learning.
How layered. How slowly it arrives.
How quiet, the invitation
to turn toward the one
who could despise this body
and not push her away.
To wrap her instead in these
thick soft arms and choose
to love her.
Posts Tagged ‘body’
After All These Years
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, body, self-compassion on September 25, 2024| 15 Comments »
Nocturnal Hyperhidrosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, body, menopause, praise, sweat on September 24, 2024| 15 Comments »
I do not love it, the way I fall asleep cold
only to wake in a flush of heat.
Do not love the soaking, the drenching
the damp, then the clammy.
Not once in those small dark hours
have I thought to praise the eccrine glands,
the aprocine glands that secrete the sweat,
so much sweat, the sweat that makes me
shove down the covers and seek
a dry towel to lie on. The cool
night air never quite cool enough.
I don’t love it, the way the warmth
steals me from dreams and returns me
to the demands of body, a body
that’s changing, that’s aging,
a body with an exquisitely sensitive
hypothalamus that worries my body’s too warm.
How quick I am to complain instead of praise.
How hard to remember in these hot and sodden
hours that I admire the wisdom of the body.
Let me now remember I’m a being made of water,
a pond of a woman returning herself to the air.
I am at the mercy of evaporation.
How natural it is, though I do not love it,
this teacher in what comes next.
This is how I practice how
to disappear.
Curvaceous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, body image, change, self love, transition on June 10, 2024| 8 Comments »
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.
Mother and Son
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, grief, love, mother, son on June 5, 2024| 9 Comments »
Briefly, you were taller than I,
tall enough that when we hugged
my head rested against your chest,
your body lean from growing
so fast. My body remembers
how new it felt when you
gathered me in long, slender arms
the way I had once cradled you.
It is not the same to be held
by your absence, no warmth,
no scent. Still, I let myself
be held by what is here—
no heartbeat but my own,
but oh, the love still growing.
After the Nightmare
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, love, nightmare, sleep, softness, tenderness on March 10, 2024| 2 Comments »
As if the whole world depended on it
I nestled deeper into your warmth,
made myself soft as morning light,
soft as a lullaby, softer than that,
as if wars could be stopped and
peace achieved if only I could
make of my flesh a place so safe
you could sleep.
The Crown
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, grief, head on February 5, 2024| 2 Comments »
Tonight I miss the top of your head—
the way it fit beneath my chin
when you sat on my lap to find Waldo.
I miss the three cowlicks that swirled there,
how they made your hair bounce
with every step—a challenge
for every haircutter we ever met.
I miss the smell of your head,
a place I would again and again
and again sniff. And the way
you tucked your head into my neck
when we’d snuggle in your bed
before sleep. I miss the way
I could no longer see the top of your head
when you grew so much taller than I.
And the silken dark gold of your hair,
how it slipped through my fingers
like something I was still learning to value.
How simple it is, how primal, this love.
And today, this—the ghost
of the top of your head
as I don’t see it bobbing slightly above
the sea of other heads.
Hurkle-durkle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, contentment, laziness, sleep, words on August 3, 2023| 10 Comments »
(v.) to lie in bed for a long time, to lounge around
When the eyes decide
to stay closed.
Though it’s light.
Though dark tea
and blue skies await.
Though there’s music to hear
and books to read,
and sugar peas fresh on the vine,
still the eyes decide
to be closed is divine.
And then there’s the warmth
of the bed, the perfect
weight of soft sheets,
the way the blood
has transformed into honey
and the limbs now curl
so perfectly into the perfectly
sleep-drunk, ease-heavy body.
When there’s work and a host
of sparkling to-dos,
but all the eyes want
is to stay closed,
to sail on the sweet ship
of near-sleep just a few,
just a few more,
just a few …
Doing the Heart Work
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, breaking open, heart on April 30, 2023| 10 Comments »
The heart circulates blood through the body
a thousand times a day and not once
do I give it a thought. Not once do I think
of those four chambers, flooding and releasing,
the valves opening and closing to keep blood flowing.
It does this while I eat, while I crumple, while I teach.
It does this while I hold my daughter as she weeps,
while I stumble, while I fall apart, while I sleep.
Oh body, though I speak of being broken hearted
and the gifts that come in the breaking, meanwhile,
you go on with your ceaseless heart work, the work
of flow, the work of current, the work of push through,
of never saying no, the work of life, the necessary work
that allows all the beautiful breaking open to happen.
One Impossible Hug
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, death, hug, loss, love on February 25, 2023| 4 Comments »
my arms still recall
the slender stem of your body—
oh, sweet empty circumference