This is An Apology to my Body & I Noticed

Both featured in the 2023 Issue of The Broken Plate

This is An Apology to my Body:

I have spent so much time hating you,

when I should have loved you instead.

So many tears shed over marks of red

which wrap around my waistline. My skin,

the trellis, giving life to a garden of crimson vines.

Dear Body, I regret that I have reduced you to

three digits; numbers illuminated on a scale.

Becoming angry with you every time they rose

as if that was any indicator of your worth

I have criticized you for changing.

I have ridiculed you as you have held me upright.

I have punished you when all you were doing

was what you were supposed to. So,

if you'll let me, I'd like to make up for lost time.

Learn to love you. Learn to treat you right.

I will never miss the opportunity to remind you

that you are beautiful, because, dear body,

you deserve to be embraced

properly, whole heartedly, and with pride.

I just hope that you can forgive me

for taking until now to realize

that is what I should have been doing,

this entire time.

* * *

I Noticed,

the other day, that I was smiling a lot,

and is that how grief leaves you?

Slowly, and not all at once

like how winter melts to spring.

You realize that the sun is taking its time to set,

and that pockets of snow have melted into the earth

causing flowers to bloom from frozen soil.

It feels like summer now: Sunshine and starlight,

soft clouds cut by rainbows which paint the sky.

The absence of cold, the abundance of warmth.

And is that how grief leaves you?

Or does it ever leave at all?

I don't really know the answer but,

I like to think that if it stays, it does so kindly.

That maybe it sticks around as a friend or a comforting force

with pure intentions and the purpose to remind us

how no matter the season,

spring will always come again.

That loss, while painful,

serves to remind you

you have loved

and you have lived.