An Unexpected Love - a piece by Heli St Luce

I fell in love with my body today

Stopped looking at it for a moment through the world's eyes

That compare and judge, criticise, condemn and despise

I felt it's strength of muscle and bone

The warmth of my skin, it's shades, it’s tones

The fact that it takes by yielding gives in receiving, soft, lush, pliable

I liked for the first time in all my years that my hands

Sink into my tummy and almost disappear

Hands that shape, mould, strain

To re create that which has been destroyed, build it up again

These hands encircled and cradled

As praise for the way that they pull me through the haze

They form order in the chaos and soothe the craze

My hands in my tummy are stroked as they stroke, held as they hold

My body is amazing.

If I think of all the things it can do. How it carries this heavy mind in warmth

My body is an angel to me

For though it's very visible it's something that I rarely see

I don't want to look and when I do, I see, to my ire

It doesn't fit the perfect shape to which I should aspire. It's wrong.

It reflects my love of the sedentary, the imaginary, it reflects my love of food

It's skin shows; that my ancestors were, (and still are by some)

thought of as animals or lesser, lower beings,

Some assume I'm stupid and can't access finer feelings

My hair shows that despite these beliefs, many of the higher order

Were very keen to fuck those of the animals they didn't work to death or slaughter.

My body has shapes that don't fit, can't sit, over fill, stretch and strain

But it makes love and it cuddles and it laughs so loud,

It has hairs where they choose to grow a silly fact of which I‘m proud

It's is not perky but it is firm, it’s cushioned, fleshy, squishy

It is a body of the most  ancient Goddess figurines

For many thousand years this body was a worshipped form

From the honour to this body some say the earliest societies were born

It is a primeval woman's body not a maiden's, nor a boys

It can only hope to be loved by a fearless warrior for the Goddess

One who embraces peril and adventure for their joys

Who holds their breath to plumb the depths, strives to rise to fresher skies on an unknown shore

These and many mysteries my body holds in store.

Today I fell in love with my body

The feeling faded after a short time, drawn away by thoughts, reverie, contemplation

But it felt so good, those few short moments of internal animation

I'm going to do it again as soon as I may, it comes unbidden,

I hope it stays