The jar opens, a quiet ceremony,
My fingers dip into the cream,
A soft pool of moonlight, cool and waiting,
And I lift it, warm with intention,
To touch the landscape of me.
I start at the edges—
Elbows etched with time,
Knees carved with forgotten seasons.
The first touch is a hesitant prayer,
A whisper for forgiveness:
For the days I wore my body like armour,
Not as a temple,
For the years I neglected the sanctuary of me.
The cream melts,
A quiet rebellion against the cracks,
Slipping past the brittle language of struggle,
Through the parched years where life's winds scoured me raw.
It journeys deeper,
Like memory unearthing truths I thought buried,
Into the roots of me—
Where the real scars wait.
This is not just skin;
This is the geography of endurance,
A record of storms weathered and won.
My skin drinks greedily,
The cream swirling into the valleys,
Turning the arid into oasis,
The fractured into whole.
My hands, dark rivers,
Anoint the landscape of myself.
They glide over each hill and valley,
Tracing the topography of my story.
The cracked plains of my wintered body
Yield to this ritual of resurrection,
This hymn of touch—
Softness entering places I forgot to love.
Each touch presses deeper,
Unearthing the places I neglected,
Places where no light shone.
Each movement forgives,
Erases the memory of lack,
Heals the silence that wounded me.
I linger at my collarbone,
A sacred ridge, a faultline of old wounds.
I smooth the cream there, where I carry
The weight of days unspoken.
It seeps into fissures,
Seals with warmth,
And I am stitched together
By the act of being here, now,
Hands upon myself, whole.
Healing is not loud.
It is not fast.
It moves like cream through thirsty skin,
Like forgiveness through a heavy heart.
The residue of winter becomes
A memory, a metaphor I choose to leave behind.
The dryness, the ache, the dust of disappointments
Flake and lift, confessing—
They have lingered long enough.
Tonight, I am my own healer.
My fingers press and glide,
And I learn to live beneath the surface again—
To trust the depth,
To let the cream traverse the labyrinth
Of broken histories,
To let it bloom forgiveness beneath the skin.
My hands rest on the bare expanse of my shoulder,
Where my touch meets my body,
And my body meets my spirit.
The smoothness is a promise—
That I am enough for this,
For myself,
For this unhurried becoming.
There is power in this touch,
My own hands knowing me
In a way no lover ever could.
Each motion is both question and answer.
This body, this skin,
Carries all the brittle tales of days gone by,
Yet each sweep of cream invites a new story—
A story of care, of reclamation.
The cream becomes me.
I am a vessel of softness
Holding my own healing.
As the last trace dissolves,
I rise lighter, quieter—
Serenity creamed into being.
The black of me, night folded into itself,
Shines with light spilling from the cream.
I am whole in this moment, darkness glowing.
Under the pale watch of winter's sky,
The world stops.
It is just me, my skin,
And the silence in between.
The night stretches around me like a shawl of peace,
And my hands, steady as prayer, find,
In this simple touch,
The courage to let the dry residue of life fall away.
I smooth the cream over every part of me,
And in this quiet ritual, I am reminded:
There is beauty in this healing.
There is beauty in the softness I allow myself to feel.
