April 13

“indicators of ecosystem health”

My skin is canary song.
It is mayfly eggs downstream.
It is the usnea lichen on my limbs striking deals with nitrogen.
Even though it does not speak in a language I can read
it signals trouble.
When in November it spelled something’s wrong
I turned to professionals with letters
like reading glasses perched on the ends of their names:
MD, PC, PhD.
Their test results said:
More tests. More tests said four different things.
I did not want a diagnosis and
something else to swallow.
I wanted to find out what my mine is made of,
the exact location of the leak upstream,
why lichen stopped doing business in the forest.
But all the doctors could give me was a generic antibiotic,
an inflammation classification, a shrug,
and a heavy bill.
I am beginning to realize that a lifetime
of reading textbooks for med school
is not the same thing as understanding
the semantics of skin,
and even if I don’t know all the words
my body writes in a rash font across my arms,
I can listen when it sings,
and maybe,
if I start putting faith instead of pills in my body,
it will not only recover;
it will thrive.

April 1

"love letter to my body"
trigger warning: body issues, eating disorder

Dear body,
I have not always been the most faithful.
I have loved the Indianas of other women’s bellies
and the Appalachians of their ilia.
I have imagined their tiny clementine breasts in place
of your heirloom melons. I have
accused your hands of the crime of
being too wise –
I’m sorry for that.
I have treated you less like a temple
and more like a temptation
to call my skin sin.
From my father I received my nose
hairs,
doll-size ears,
and knees on rusty hinges;
from my mother,
feet that like to run,
myopia,
and the trichotillomania that compels me to
pothole my face
into a road so ragged it is difficult to
reach the destination of my eyes
without getting stuck along the way.

Dear body,
do you remember when Alex’s mom
used to call me Skinny Minnie and
you stood tall as birthday balloons
like you had accomplished something
simply by existing?
Remember when, three years later,
Mom said “chubby”
and you deflated like you had failed?
I know we have a grab bag history:
our handshakes with anorexia
(never a closer relationship) giving way to
our barnacle-knuckled grip
on body positivity.
I learned how to read a scale before
I learned how to take my own
pulse.
I have loved you loudly,
but sometimes those who love their
bodies loudest still believe they would
love their bodies louder if their bellies grew
perpendicular to gravity.

Dear body,
you have transformed paper into art,
bicycles into vehicles,
and rum into kisses and
impossible amounts of urine –
and people say you’re not magic?
you are not a temple –
you are the prayers that fill it.

Dear body,
I think you should know that
I did not learn to love the Venus curve of my belly
until I saw it shining on the
hip bone horizons of other girls.
I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work –
you’re supposed to love yourself before you’re capable
of loving others –
but
the human heart is capable of firehosing blood for 30 feet
just imagine how far love could travel
if you aimed it right
and what it could do
reflected in the mirrors of other people’s arms.