Dear Body...

Dear Body

 

i struggle to speak these words

They stick in my throat

Like the fingers i spent years

Choking on as i attempted to rid myself

Of the burden of your flesh

i have spent thirty years 

Trying to escape your walls, these bones that create a cage

i have carved every insult, every

Jibe, and slanderous word into these veins

My macabre mural of self hatred.

i hated you and 

i made sure i told you every day

Just how worthless you really were

How vile and contemptuous your very existence was

As you carried me through the blades

Of thieving hands.

i carved into your blotchy canvas

And spilled your ruby essence,

Your fingertips shredded by the blades

Designed to cut away all that was natural to you

Your hands covered in our blood

Cursing you for that treacherous beat

That just refused to stop

No matter how much i tried

To block your halls with every bite.

i cursed you for every breath you dared to take

Each inhale an unforgivable betrayal

i believed with every fibre of my being that

You were as guilty as they were,

You were after all 

What they were trying to steal.

You imprisoned me,

Held me captive as they ripped me apart

You showed no compassion, no kindness

As you continued on each day

Never ceasing to wake me each morning

That chickadees’ song is the death rattle of my soul – 

i can never escape you.

 

Dear body,

i never considered the possibility

That we were prisoners together

You and i, suspended in a lens that could never capture our form

i never thought that you were just as trapped as me.

i spent years studying your face in the reflection

An alien whose freckles and dimples

Seemed to confirm your flawed nature

The soft curves that formed in our youth created mountains

Of revulsion, furthering the proof of how i believed you betrayed me

You who was meant to protect me, 

To carry me through this life and teach me all that it means

To be human

My sacred temple, holy bones and life blood 

i stood before the mirror, imagining all the ways

i could extract my revenge upon you

Ran the blade across your monstrous belly

Picturing peeling your flesh away like the fat off a rib bone

 

Dear Body,

i am sorry.

You were never the one, to break me

On the contrary, you kept me together.

i couldn’t conceive of the notion that perhaps you were trying

To save me, enduring what i could not

That you took within you the poison they forced down our throats

Fighting against the crushing weight of scripture that left craters

Of destruction

i resented your reliability, never thought that the pounding in this cage

Was the sound of rebellion

The drum of war 

Never thought you were waiting for the moment we could be free

i never knew that i held the key to our prison

A freedom that was ours to take back from the gnarled hands

Of nightmares.

Dear Body,

i tried to murder you,

And yet you remained, your reluctant beating refusing to give up,

A battle that you fought each day

Not just against enemies without, 

But against the enemy within.

Somehow you knew that one day

This flesh could fit these bones

And this soul would finally find its home

Within the halls of your heart.

 

To the body that has carried me all these years

Who has endured the onslaught of abuse, who still holds

The memories of trauma that whisper across your flesh

Like fingers in the dark, when i am lost in visions of yesterday

Forgive me.

i understand now, how you clung to each breath of air

Waiting for the rebel inside to realise

That we have always been in this, together,

Just you and me.

 

Dear body, 

i see the ocean in your eyes

And the magnificence of the willow in your thighs

i feel the salmon rushing, when your blood hums with excitement 

Each stuttered breath like a leaf floating in the breeze

i see tree rings of life in your fingertips,

And the power of lightning in each thought

 

Dear body, you are as glorious as the rising sun

That no artist has ever managed to truly capture

Forgive me.

i foolishly accepted the lies they used to twist

My reality so that you, in all your

Pink tenderness

Were the enemy.

i believed that the softness of your exterior reflected

A weakness, you,

My precious Medusa, were as innocent 

As the child in her sunflower dress

 

Dear body,

It took me thirty years to learn 

That you are compassion

Embodied.