One day when my last breaths
bless these lungs
and it’s time to set on that other journey,
I want to be able to say:
I loved this body– my home of wonder and beauty and pain- I loved this body so well.
I want to say, I cherished my body like I cherished my dreams. Like I cherished the world. I learned to love it like one loves a child in the times of war.
And war it was– against my own territories. But I brought peace- and it wasn’t too late. I loved and loved and touched and praised where I had devastated my own lands, and set free what was taken hostage by my culture
I sang and sang over these curves and the belly and the weird toes and the childhood scar and every inch of skin and blemish and deficit and imperfection- I sang and loved, and made an anthem of acceptance
I sat in temples of sensation. I found the whole world in my womb. I lived in this flesh like one lives on holy, holy ground and I gave thanks for its miracle, its woundability, its sacred pleasure.
And when the choice was mine,
I said, no, thank you,
I will not squeeze
my soul into the corset
of a perfect body-
I’ll be my own,
wild and wise
and yearning body–
a body that knew how to
cherish herself
and the world,
all the way till
the end.
~Stefana Serafina
