Grotesquely Yours🖤

I do not resent my body; I resent being translated through it.

I have my father’s nose,

a crooked bone

that sits in the center of my face

like an heirloom I never asked for.

Every time I catch my reflection,

it reminds me that it is his.

-

I have my grandmother’s complexion.

I’d like to think it resembles coffee—

my favorite drink;

the warmth of a familiar embrace.

But bitterness is an inheritance too,

and every glance reminds me that it is hers.

-

I inherited my poor eyesight

from my mother’s sisters.

I like the world without my glasses.

The way everything softens around the edges.

The way faces become smudges like thumbprints.

The way beauty and ugliness blur together

until neither of them matter.

But every morning

I struggle with contact lenses

and they burn like words of hurt

in my tired, sleepless eyes,

because I cannot bear

another person telling me

how miserable I look

with my glasses on.

-

I inherited my father’s brother’s body—

towering,

slender,

all elbows and knees.

When I was a child

I dreamt of becoming as tall as a tree.

Something that reached so high

nobody would dare look down upon it.

Now I remember whose body it is

every time I force my feet

into shoes too small,

because they don’t make my size

in the pretty womanly ones.

-

Instead of inheriting

the legacies of the women in my lineage,

their talents,

their beauty,

their grace,

I inherited the monthlies.

The hormones.

The blood.

The pain.

The endless reminders

that my body belongs to a woman

even when I do not feel like one.

Things bloom where I never scattered seeds,

and ache in places no season should reach.

The same tree I wished to become

has taken root beneath my skin,

all briars and thorns rather than flowers.

-

And if it were not for the monthlies,

those faithful little cruelties

digging their claws so deep into me being,

I think I would forget.

Forget that I am a woman.

Forget that I am human.

Sometimes I feel more like pottery

that exploded in the kiln.

There is no point mending it back together,

people would say.

It would look Frankensteinian anyway.

All visible seams.

All mismatched pieces.

Just like the genes

that made me.

-

I wonder if they’d love me

if I had my mother’s fair skin and pretty doe eyes.

If my grandmother’s dark hair fell down my back like a river of midnight,

if I carried my mother’s sister’s silhouette, all curves and effortless grace,

if my father’s brother’s metabolism burned through me like a tireless summer fire.

I wonder if they’d look at me with more love and less disappointment

if I were softer.

Brighter.

More radiant.

More womanly.

If they did not remember the oversized glasses that swallowed half my face,

the mouth full of metal,

the teeth that still cling stubbornly to their imperfections,

the years spent growing into a face that never quite bloomed the way they expected it to.

-

I wonder if they’d love me in a world where a woman’s virtues were measured by her strength,

her kindness,

the gentleness with which she carries others,

instead of the symmetry of her face or the softness of her waist.

Perhaps then

they would notice the way I hold broken things gently.

The way I make room for others.

The way I stay.

The way I love.

Perhaps then

I would finally be woman enough.

Instead of whatever unfinished thing I am.

-

A collection of almosts.

A specter assembled

from everybody else’s features

But none of their beauty.

-

The constant prodding.

The constant reminders.

The endless inventory

of everything imperfect.

Would they find me beautiful

only once I unraveled?

until there was nothing left of me

but dust suspended in sunlight,

little specks dissolving into air.

Would they finally call me beautiful then?

When there is less of me to criticize.

Less of me to compare.

Less of me to disappoint.

Would they find beauty

in my absence—

in the shape of the space I left behind,

Would they finally love me

when there is nothing left to love?

-

So, to answer your question—

how can I be lovingly yours

when they have spent years

fighting over my body,

not to conquer it,

but to reject it?

To press their shoes down upon my skin that’s made up of broken pottery that exploded in the kiln.

Grinding fragments

into finer dust... smoother dust.

-

I am dust now. 

Dust that slips through your fingers, impossible to hold.

And I only hope that you can find me beautiful

the way you find a song beautiful

the first time you hear it.

Before you know the lyrics.

Before you understand its meaning.

Before you’ve decided whether it is worthy of staying.

-

Why must every inch of me be measured and examined?

Why must you judge my flesh

before you’ve listened to my soul?

The curve of my nose

before the shape of my laughter.

The softness of my waist

before the softness that I hold for you in my eyes.

So instead, can I be grotesquely yours?

Can I be yours with all the seams showing,

the corset strings pulled too tight,

the cracks refusing to disappear no matter how carefully they are mended?

Can I be yours as this patchwork thing made from inherited bones, old wounds, and imperfections that never learned shame?

-

And if you believe you can love me as I am

then—

love the crooked nose,

the burning eyes,

the feet too large for delicate shoes,

the kiln-fired heart

that cracked under heat

and kept beating anyway.

Love me as I am assembled,

not as I could have been.

-

Or must I wait for death?

Must I wait until flesh abandons me,

until time strips me clean to the bone?

When they finally lay me down will they call me beautiful?

Will they admire the symmetry

they spent a lifetime searching for?

White flawless bones,

bleached clean of every inherited fault.

The perfect skeleton.

-

And isn’t it strange?

that the closest I may ever come

to their idea of perfection

is when I no longer exist to hear about it.