Body +

This body wakes me up every day,

Gives me strength and creates nourishment,

provides shelter for my soul,

and is a home that always has jazz music playing and abstract paintings on the walls.

It does what it is supposed to do,

gets me from point A to point B with very little fuss...

Unless I have to go up stairs.

This body does not like stairs,

but it loves orgasms and hot showers.

This body knows joy,

knows hugs and shaking with laughter,

but this body also knows pain,

has felt the wretching of forced heaving,

felt self-inflicted cuts in various places,

has heard the laughter at jokes about how ugly it is that stick like tar in my lungs, making it hard to breathe whenever a stranger looks at me for the first time,

And this body knows what it feels like to be hated by the person who is supposed to take care of it,

hated by the person it works so hard for every single day.

See, this body may not be perfect,

but it has healed self-harm wounds,

and has gotten through the days when depression threatened to turn my bed into a coffin.

This body serves me well,

and it's time I started appreciating it because it exists for more than to appeal to the gaze of people who think I can only be healthy or beautiful if I'm a certain weight,

And it deserves more than judgement and shame because this body is mine, is a home with a blazing fireplace that keeps me warm against the cold of this world.

because it serves me well,

and it deserves respect.