What are these bodies, these
limbs, giving up their sap
and heat? Who decides
who dies, who lives?

What is cut down is
cut down, and
bereft children
grow in their place.

Who said you're good enough?
You're not beautiful
Well, maybe, if you just tried
To walk straight
With your hair straight
Always smiling
Stomach tucked in
With your thighs at a safe distance from each other
But not far enough for someone to make their way through
Why were your legs open?
Why was your button open?


Maybe this is why you don't have friends.
You have opinions.
Why are you seeking God anywhere else but
A temple
A mosque
A church?
God says you're beautiful only if He can see you.
Maybe that's why you're not beautiful.

No one is looking at you because you're beautiful.
They look at you because you're a freak,
A circus phenomenon
You're on display
But in all the wrong ways
With your sides hanging
And your back in everyone's faces.
How dare you impose?

Stop being yourself.
**** yourself.
Build yourself up.
But, don't forget to go through the instruction manual.

She kisses the boys and girls
that pay the most attention.
The boys play with vapor
and her girls play with tension.
I wish I was the only one
that she will decide to touch
but I am who I am
and, in a way, that is too much.

Sawblade-sunflower petals
wrap around an earthy cushion,
and the humidity hangs in the air
as her beige body is crumpled
and I feel too sober, pushing.

Baby yellow falls apart,
in her hair the flower starts
to trickle onto sheet and pillow,
decorating the absences
that define how hollow
she and I have felt before --
******* like an endangered species
on the killing floor, I whisper once,
I whisper sweet, "Don't you wish
that we didn't meet?"

She kisses the boys and girls
that give the most attention.
I played with vapor
and she played with tension.

You are an oasis of rivers
in a barren desert,
The last signs of life,
The remains of a comet
Evaporated in the sun.
You are shattered cords
And spilled ink,
Gloriously painted across broken wires
Split at the seams,
But still breathing.
You are breathing.
So learn to love it.

The first time I thought about my body
I was a sticky thirteen.
My religion teacher was always telling us,
"Your body is a temple,"
which really just meant,
"Don't have ***,"
because
you know
Jesus Hate *****.

Ten years later, everyone says,
"LOVE YOUR BODY,"
and I can't stop checking myself out in every mirror I pass.

"Love your body," whispered like a prayer
& all I hear is,
"Your body is a temple.
Your body is a temple.
Your body is a ******* TEMPLE."

What a joke:
I never hated my body
until someone told me not to.

II.

"Your body is a temple."

My body is a wasteland.

My body is an empire, long-fought-over and oft-desecrated by a war I didn't start, fought with curling irons and tubes of lip gloss.

My body is a canvas upon which I have painted a thousand versions of myself - versions I'd hardly recognize now, versions I wish I could get back.

My body is evidence in the crime of my life that proves
definitely
I did not sit back.
I was not a passive observer.

My body is a vessel, which is to say
it is nothing / it is everything.

"Your body is a temple."

Don't tell me about my body.
I've seen my reflection.
It doesn't even tell half the story.

III.

At work, Bobby the Regular always sits at the bar
and greets me with, "You look gorgeous."
He looks me dead in the eye with such grave importance,
like the revelation might save my life,
or like he's the first man to ever wanna **** me.

I know he thinks he's doing me a favor,
but
I've never felt less confident
than when a strange man
tells me I'm beautiful.

IV.

The first time my daughter comes crying to me that she hates her body,
I will not tell her she is wrong.
Instead, I will look her in the eye and say,
"Your lungs fill up with air involuntarily
& your heart beats 80 times per minute
& when you fall off of your bike and skin your knee, you cry because it hurts
& your body is not a temple.
You don't have to worship at its altar."

I will tell her all the things I should have told myself.