Resurrection

My body left me in the corner of a dark basement before I was 6, and from that day forward, it was just a burden I had to carry, or a stranger that carried me.

I lugged it once to math class, where a tall man touched it, but I wasn’t there so I didn’t mind. I let it walk ahead of me in the Easter parade, because it was wrapped in pastels and called pretty. I gave it away, and let it be taken, because it was never mine to begin with.

All my life, I’ve watched it take me places I didn’t want to go.

When I was just 15, I watched as it got pregnant. I watched as it crossed a picket line, past a plastic doll impaled on a stick and a woman yelling “killer”. I watched as it searched for me in inappropriate places. In the arms of a married man, in a gay parade, and stitched into the folded lives of other people’s secrets.

As time passed, it learned to straighten its shoulders and lift its chin, but I stayed curled around its shame. I tried to kill it with cigarettes, and comfort it with cake. I called it disgusting, ugly, fat, lazy and useless, and hid it under blankets and books. Every so often I’d take it to the gym, and try to shape it to fit the curve of someone else’s hand, but that didn’t last; it wasn’t safe for us to be in the same room for long.

As I grow older and my soul returns, my body still limps a few steps behind. No longer young and sexy, it can’t carry me the way it used to. No longer ashamed, I won’t let it go where I can’t follow. So here it is, right next to me. But we still have our differences. I think I have forgiven what my body has not forgotten. It’s still out there in the world, stumbling through it all, sucking in its stomach, while I stay humble and here and fully at home. It’s been on it’s own for so long, it’s been so mistreated, it’s going to take a while to undo all the damage. But I hope to reclaim my body before I have to let it go for good. I hope it rises from the dead, is freed from the basement, and is saved by my own loving embrace.