This is my body.
I am
Skin and bones.
Flesh and sin.
I am doing my best.
And I am finally learning that
If I am not good enough for you
Or you
Or you
It is not my problem to become good.
I am what I am.
I am this story and its pale slipcover
Covered with words that my skin drinks in.
Ink is toxic
But love burns more,
And I am starting to know the unsettling truth that has been hiding
In my marrow for years:
I am no addict.
I am afraid,
But I am not dependent.
I need nothing but these feet to kiss the ground
And this heart to love the world.
The faces I've chosen to worship
Are starting to blend and meld.
The universe is beginning to have its own visage
In every person I meet,
And suddenly they can all mean anything
And none of them
Can mean everything.
And that is a loss, yes, it's a loss of faith
Of a stubborn longing I have served for years
That one set of eyes may outshine the others.
But the truth is that anything holy that I have ever touched
I have made so with my fingertips.
Anyone lovely I have ever adored
I have painted with my heart.
We are alone again,
Me and my bone-white sheath,
And we look forward.
Today somebody told me that no love is worth it
If it ever hurts you.
What a concept, what a dream- it stopped me dead.
A person whose touch brought no pain?
And I thought on the possibility for a moment,
And realized that the only people who could ever hope to give and get no pain in love
Are those who dwell beneath gravestones in the silent fields
And never touch at all.
Bravery is stepping forward into a brutal world
Knowing that it WILL change you
That it will mar you
That it will
Eventually
Claim you
And stepping forward anyhow.
Here I am in my moonlight skin, soft and delicate and easily punched through
Like a paper lantern
But what have I to fear
When the only thing I know about this world
Is that it will **** me someday?
The only thing I can be certain of is that I will lose all of this,
And so I am free to enjoy it as I please,
Knowing that I suffer no punishment
Only inevitability
Only
Nature.
I step on.
I surge on.
I have learned in these weeks
How to stand before the world
My naked soul
Shining in the sun
And be unashamed of my fragility.
I have learned and it has seeped inside of me
And I have cast off a veil I have clung to like death
A shroud I've hidden beneath
And for the first time in a long time
I stand, unconcealed.
This is my body.
And I am
Undaunted.