aimee-niebuhr

I thought maybe I shouldn’t share this here.
They’ve told me my body is not what it used to be.

(It is softer and stronger all at once.)

I thought, perhaps, it was best to stay hidden away.

(They say it is no longer beautiful, when there is a baby held tight to your breast.)

I remembered the boys in the hall, hands taking what was not theirs to take. The ugly shame I could not shake.

I remembered the men whose eyes wandered with the right to stare. My body sinful, simply for existing.

(They did not know that I was everything. Hidden deep, a sacred divinity.)

I was the spirit of all of the women who came before me; of the women yet to come.

(I was the mother, the aunt, the sister, the friend. The daughter, and even, the son.)

Three children + forty-eight months of my life, wrapped in an embrace, just like this.

(When you have nourished another, you have nourished yourself.)

Yes. My body is different, now.

(Because my soul proudly exists.)

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