learning to love

Ten years into learning to love

my body someone asked,

What don't you like?

What don't you like
about your body?

My mind traced the curves I know
from lotion slathered on, slowly,
and looking into mirrors until
I saw beauty. Nothing there in the
curves and sags not to love.

I once fell backwards
into a bank of snow with a laugh.
cheeks flushed from two hours
of clearing fluffy white from sidewalks.
Heart and arms strong for the task.

When I run, I feel like I"m gliding -
my feet above the track my body soars,
less swiftly than it feels for sure,
but I soar on these  legs that resemble trunks
with their muscles toned from years of carrying this
well curved body of mine across the face of the earth

My eyes have earned me long gazes
from admirers who could not seem to pull
their eyes away from mine. They are my vain pride,
but I allow them that for they are the part of me
I've never hated.

Genetics, a propensity to have my nose
buried in a book or a computer screen.
My eyes need help. Fifteen years of contacts.
They beg for a break. The budget agrees.
I switch to glasses.The cheap kind.

I perch them atop my nose and cringe
a little at their prominence with their dark
black frames and the way they seem to cast
shadows over and into  my eyes.

And here I must learn to love my eyes
as they are - deep blue (but sometimes green),
flawed and imperfect like the rest of me.
I have spent a decade learning to listen to my body
and to give her what she needs.

So, here too, I listen to the cherished
voice of my body, I listen to the voice that says
she's more, that her flaws do not deem her
unworthy, that there is something to still
to love in these eyes that see this world.