my body is an anachronism

trapped in the wrong age, unable to see its value

I’ve been to lands older than the place of my birth and have feltl the pull of time…..

welcoming me back, lulling me home….

I am the Venus of Willendorf

fertility goddess

the ideal of motherhood

bringing forth life to a barren landscape

wanton and wanted

I am the muse of Rubens

Botero’s dream

the void on Lucian Freud’s couch

a living canvas

untamable and wild

I am the mirror of ancestors past

the strong women smiling in a black and white photograph from a pile of memories in my Grandmother’s shoebox

women with my same breasts, same hips, same build

tillers of the land, shelters of my genetic code

my bones, my skin hold the history of ages past

I must find a historian in this world of the now

who will love each inch of me like they love each tome on a dusty shelf in a library

each word read firing like neurons; the lightest touch of a lover’s caress

I will not be ashamed of this body 

for I love it as I love history

and literature

and poetry

I see the magic in my limbs, the grace in its movement

the strength in my narrative