Just a body

“It’s just a body,” I dictate myself as I look down and see the thing I despise the most. The belly that isn’t toned enough looks like a deflated balloon. My thighs — I still remember where they were touched by someone I now can’t stand. No, my thighs cannot be saved. I’m on the verge of tears. My dry skin is shedding the moments I can’t return to. It becomes dust I’ll eventually sweep away and forget. And when I’ll turn sixty — if I ever turn sixty — my skin will look like dry apricots. People will say I’m a carton of expired milk — still full to give, just gone too bad to consume. And I consume myself, and I’m not sixty yet. I examine every detail I could fix. My head is a TV with no signal; it buzzes with a lot of noise. I can barely feel the heart that once cared too much. Perhaps its shield was never big enough. I see my hand and the small scar I carved when I was sixteen. It used to bleed; now it’s just healed skin. But it will never heal enough to disappear entirely, quietly reminding me. The shaved hairs keep trying to grow back. They don’t know I like to pull them out to soothe myself. Or maybe they do know; they just forget — forget before they’re ripped out by someone who doesn’t care for them. I notice the stretch marks on my hips — the cost of growing up too fast. I press my hips as I wish to flatten them like a flower between the pages of a heavy book, so they become shrunken. Who said it’s pretty to have that width in the lower part of the body anyway? The ratio pisses me off — the tiny wrists, but not enough of a gap between my thighs. My legs are shorter than my spine, and I feel wrong in quiet ways no one else would ever notice. At the same time, I’m so tall and clumsy — every time I bump into something, I feel too big to take up this much space. If I were a Greek statue, I’d be the one with uneven marble and a crooked stance. Pretty weird, I’d say. I remember all the times I tried to exhaust this body with movement, to starve it so it would feel how angry I was. I can recall my first cigarette, first bitter taste of alcohol and how horrendous it felt, so I ran. “It’s just a body,” they affirm, as they grab my waist like I’m some kind of a plush toy. But I don’t have a stitched-on smile, and I don’t want to be held by dirty-minded hands. I don’t want to be touched at all. They tear through me without thinking, trying to find themselves in the wrong place. I’m a cemetery of crushed hopes and unmet desires. I’m a failure with no borders. And then I’m thrown out, defective and furious. I lie beside my fresh grave, letting the cold snow touch me first — only for flowers to hug me later. “It’s just a body,” my mind repeats when I stand after resting. I look at my face and see my hair cut short because it’s too hard to hold onto so many tangles. My hair is the only feature I adore — though I wish it curled like the tendrils of a grapevine. A line of freckles resides on my cheeks — kissed by the sun, they’d say. But the moon had kissed me more; because I couldn’t sleep at night, she gifted me some dark strokes under my eyes. I wish I were grateful. I’m only twenty. Oh, to be this young and restless…I look into my warm brown eyes — the only thing my father left me before he went away. I stare at them and try to see what my mother once noticed. But I’m only twenty. My eyes will never change, despite everything else. Oh, to be this dumb and clueless. “It’s just a body,” we think. But who has ever seen a soul? Not them, not even me. Perhaps the things that matter most were never meant to be seen. I forget that sometimes, and the cycle repeats itself. It circles back to where I started, and I feel trapped inside my being. But if my body never existed, would my soul be beautiful? I guess I’ll know after I die. After I see everything clearly. After I feel.