I sometimes take visual and emotional snapshots vowing to remember this moment for the rest of my life. One happened when my family and I left my childhood home to move 500 miles away. The moving van door was open, I was twelve years old. Standing on our peeling white porch in the sun, I realized my life was changing forever. The moment in this poem is another such snapshot. Looking back through the chapters of years, smiling at the young woman who is still me, now older with the marks of my life on our body, filled me with such tenderness and gratitude. 

 

I lie naked on my bed

in the middle of the week.

Big windows open to the sky.

Sunlight friendly and

cat-warm on the golden oak boards.

A slight breeze stirs my skin.

My hands slide across my body,

soft, even softer as I get older.

My breasts that were full of milk,

twenty-four years ago, now

resting under my fingers,

smooth neat line of the C-section.

I feel hip replacement traces

on each thigh.

I sigh with satisfaction

for a job well done.

She, my body and I,

have been together for years.

Skin all new

many times over

since I sat on a different bed,

seventeen years young.

Wet from the shower,

I brushed my long brown hair,

promising myself that years later

I would remember this moment.

By then, I imagined,

my body would also be

loved by another.