the perfect ideal body image is no where near what I look like. I haven’t really met any guy yet who has referred to my body as beautiful, and you know that’s ok. even though dimples run around my thighs, even though I am marked with lines of strain and streams of growth, it’s ok. I am trying to convince myself that this body I am living in is a beautiful temple; one not to be hated or tortured. a temple to be carefully treated with love and grace. I am trying to convince myself that maybe he fell for what stood out the most. not my body or my outer skin of health, but me, myself, and I. what I stand for, who I care for, how I speak and approach, the way I laugh at a pointless joke that was told an hour before, how I choose pineapples over peaches, or maybe even how I choose simple small talk over a high energy activity. maybe to someone, my body is just perfect, because the other components mean so much more than what is bluntly visible.

                         (j.a.r.)

The moon shines a cool blue tonight
as we entwine our fingers, laying on the baseball field
beneath diamond heavens. We lie
in silence, in the moments when the Universe reveals
itself, and contemplate the distances between one celestial body to
another, the space between
us growing as I turn south
to find Orion while you seek Cassiopeia in the north.

Shooting stars cross the sky, and we wish separately on dead
stars and dead dreams, lights already grown red and extinguished
as we whisper in the dark, passing
between phases.

And in the end we're all left searching.