where have i been all this while?

where have i been all my life?
where have i been?
i'm swimming in the violent foam
i'm tiptoeing across the precarious ledge
i'm walking through a mirror
i'm climbing an old growth birch
and peeling bark from my body
revealing the lightness of flesh and the density of bone.

where have i been all my life?
i've been floating on a raft
i've been submerged purposefully
navigating relations on strange anchored ships
tripping through karma
soaring on the sky
but where have i been?

this body has been here but what about me?
i've been exploring skin myths
crevices of memories
and the rooms with views
i've been digging through
fumbling
falling
carving my way
scavenging
slicing, dicing
threading
amputating
hooking.
and surviving

this body is here; but where was i
all the time it took to unhook
unzip
and come undone?
did i go away
or was i always here?

my feet are different now then they were when i was away;
my callouses know where i have been.
my face tells me too;
the wrinkles i've been cultivating since birth
come from smiling, frowning, laughing and crying

my belly is sometimes round
it has never experienced the gift of a woman's potential fullness
am i still a woman regardless?
what am i becoming a mother to?
my pelvis is still tipped, slightly tight.
i'm a virgin at 35
my womb a hidden doorway
for a birthing of a mystery

i love it. i love this body. i love this story. i love this day this night: this.
i love the pink and the white and the red and the brown
and the color of my body
i love the golden specks. i'm a different kind of bambi
i love mysterious moans late at night that come from me
finding myself
and the unusual bumps that occur when i'm lost

i love this heart hiding beneath these breasts
i like the landscape of the skin i sometimes neglect
the outline of my body is how i find my place
the flesh of my story is how i fill out
the meat on the bones of what was
and what is calcified is my song
i'm in love with a foreign temple.
i'm no longer afraid to enter.

i love the story of my body.
and the intimacy
between where i am
and where i have been all this while.