"What Your Body Means To Me"

When you were born you were given an extraordinary gift.

You were given a nose! And ears and a belly and two very handsome calves.

A stubborn mind and a secretly soft heart.

You were given a body, which is an extraordinary gift.

It alerts you when it’s in pain, tingling with sharp pricks and deep aches

fills you with warmth when it’s happy, your lungs heaving from laughter,

it lets you know when you’re in love, pulsing and flooding with the rhythm of a heartbeat. 

 

It destroys the invaders and defends you when attacked

and allows you to experience the world directly,

the bitter breath of winter that lets you see your own ,

the cool sweet rain of spring that sticks your shirt to your skin.

This miraculous contraption, it allows you to skip, to leap, and to touch the sky.

with it, you can walk, you can run, you can spread your wings and fly.the list

is endless.

 

So why judge your body’s value by what it looks like?

why not love your body for what it can do?

 

Sure, silvery chain necklaces and expensive cotton sleeves may be nice.

 

But what makes your body wondrous, what makes YOU wondrous,  

is how you can wrap your two arms around the ones you love, and even if for a moment, can make them feel like they’re protected from anything, no matter how terrible or how painful.

 

it’s how you support your friends and family when they fall, share your warmth when the universe fails to.

It’s how you can tremble when you’re afraid of the dark, yet still reassure your little brother that there are no monsters under his bed tonight.

but most of all, it’s how you leave the world at the end of everyday, promise to come back the next, and do.


 

And so, having a flat stomach shouldn’t matter when you can dance away all the sadness, sing the angels to sleep, and hush a room with the powerful words of your story and I KNOW, hearing your story will do the world a greater favor than hearing the grumbles of your belly.

Having an 8-pack shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t matter more than the fact that you’re able to get up each day no matter how daunting the future looks, shouldn’t matter more than the fact that you’re able to make someone feel loved just by giving them your unrestrained smile, and doesn’t matter, when you can make them feel grounded just by holding their hand.

 

And, I'm not just muttering ideologies

This is not easy for me to tell you

because I know exactly what it's like.

Just as they say in Chemistry class,

as the pressure goes up.

as everyone including myself starts pressing down,

it's almost as if I can't help the volume of my self-esteem from shrinking.

Just as I finish each meal, and run my fingers over my stomach (swift line)

It's almost as if I can barely believe my own poem

But I want YOU to.

 

Because I want you to believe you’re worth it even though your face is like a sky of scarlet stars. I want you to believe you’re extraordinary even though you haven’t gotten any taller since the 8th grade, even though you have to bend your head when you enter doors. I want you to believe you’re beautiful even though someone called you ugly. No, I want you to believe you’re beautiful because someone said you’re ugly and you realized that you are more than that.

 

Because you realized you’re more than a size on a price tag, more than an edited profile picture.

Because you realized you are not a number on scale one to ten, and you are definitely not “fun-sized”.

 

Beauty is not reserved for a select few, and the select few shouldn’t be reserved to beauty. We are more than beauty……..


We are more.. than beauty.

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