A Love Letter to My Body

Image Courtesy: Pinterest

I bring the razor to my neck, careful to not break skin, and dig out a path of shaving cream. It's not something one realizes until they’re in a moment like this — intimate, alone, close in proximity to a mirror — that you’re not looking back at your 12, 15, or 17-year-old self. My stubble grows rough and wiry. My crow’s feet lie defined and dark. I am an atlas of memory and time, of experience and gratitude.

The shaving cream crawls down my body, caressing my curves and outlining a grace that should have been given months before. My chest has grown, and I think about the resting space for my lovers’ heads. My eyes reflect a forest overrun with thickets. They used to be blue. My hips outline their way into my thighs. I think this is the most beautiful part about me. What bloodshed it is to think that I would be convinced otherwise.

My curls that grew in after sickness, my tired feet that have carried me this far, my calloused hands that brush my loved one’s cheeks, my stomach allowing me to keep my whole being going.

As I smooth out my skin, watching the stubble-specked foam fall from my face and into the sink, I imagine what this body has been through; what I have put it through. And it has forgiven me time after time, keeping me alive. On my worst days, my body is an essential part of slowing me down, but at my best, it serves as a goddamn golden chariot racing around the day.

I draw out the last line of skin that needs to be taken care of and all I can think is: How lucky am I to be made so beautifully? How lucky am I to be able to exist and experience through this body?         

Strike Out,

Writer: Blake N. Fiadino

Editor: Jayna O

Tallahassee