Legs Wide Open

"I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better."

-Frida Kahlo

I was born to a skinny woman with long brown hair and a large nose and full, sweaty lips, and big green eyes. Her legs spread wide as possible, her vagina opening up and me, squished, soaked in her inside's liquid popping out in short bursts. My wet head pulsing in tune with my newly birthed skin. After I came out, she held me in her arms and I lapped at her swollen breasts, leaking with milk. And she kept me in her arms. My body the only thing she ever loved. Over the years, she held me tightly and brushed my hair and helped dress ever edge of my body until I was old enough to pick out my own clothes and touch my own edges. But she still told me that I was beautiful and that she loved me. I grew up to turn edges into curves and nipples into just the tops of full, misshapen breasts. The body I once loved turned dark. The marks on my face left my birth turned to streams of tears. My reflection told me crueler things than anyone else ever would.

And I was told to be numb and that this body was not mine to hate, it was everyone else's. And never again would anyone love me the way she did when she birthed my skin with her imperfect own.

rest in peace