A Girl Grows

felicity

i guarded my body
with love and strength.

it was my vitality,
my source of felicity.
i was happy with it
and it was happy with me.

you saw this
and lusted after it.

you took my hand
and we laughed as we ran down a hill together. the night was dark. everlastingly dark; the stars provided barely any comfort.

my feet sank into the fresh dirt.
my hair cascaded free down my shoulders and along the side of my face, some pieces flying into my open, laughing mouth.

a gorgeous sort of peace resonated
from my fingertips to my feet.
the night air felt alive with the kind of love i had for myself and only for myself. twirling in the open, my body rejoiced.

i was so free and joyful;
why would you ruin it?

you were set on ruining me from the beginning. i did not know; how could i have known?

my lips uttered prayers,
beseechingly i asked you to stop,
stop.

moonlight ran down my face in white luminescent tears. my smooth skin tainted, i felt tremors of bruises deep down, even in the veins and strings of my barely beating heart.

my body was my shrine.
you should not have messed with it.

afterwards it took me so long to get rid of the ugly taste of you from my mouth.

the blue-black watercolor spread throughout my skin was never beautiful; you called it art.

even now
i tremble
because i remember.

do you know how long it took for me to accept myself again? to try to love someone else, even though i remembered what your fingers have done to me?

i bathed in starlight and dipped my hair in honey. still i could not feel cleansed of you.

it took me a year to understand that this shrine was never yours, it was mine; i gave you nothing and you gave me nothing but bruises that you deemed exquisite.

it was a fine Sunday night. i smiled as i felt the warmth of my love seeping through my hollows. where you have cut out of me, i have replaced with my own love.

i stretched my arms out, victoriously.

you thought you won,
because you thought you took over my body.

no. i love the shrine i have been blessed with, and it was never yours. it has forever been mine. it speaks of centuries and eons and epochs of harmony with its soul. it whispers things so old and lovely you would shrivel away because you'd be unworthy to listen. it sings lullabies and daydreams more enlightened and more full of dripping, marigold, honey yellow sunlight than your mind could not even understand.

my body is my shrine and it is mine.

it has never been anyone else's.

—lana