Reflect

I have such a lovely butt. Even though I’m not at my target weight, I am quite enamored of my ass. The full length mirror shows it well, along with the accompanying fullness of thighs. I like that too. Thunder-thighs? Yea. Jiggly, meaty, and several handfuls of fierce fire. The better to stomp some idiot that assumes because I’m big, I’m desperate.

I smile and laugh at my demure viciousness. I can hear the sound reflecting off the mirror, but I don’t see the facial movement that accompanies it.

I am still unable to look on my face without flinching.

My waist is dropping. My hips are smoothing out into teasing slopes. Fuck, my body is sexy. I didn’t always see myself this way. Even when I was the U.S. Army approved fat content (read: too thin), I didn’t like my body. There was always something wrong, something that deviated too far from the cultural norm. Usually, skin color. Wrong shade of brown. I would read fashion magazines, both for “American” women, and “African-American” women, and try whatever makeup colors were being hawked that season. Except I am too light for “African-American” color palettes, and too dark for mainstream Americana. So, I hid my body in oversized clothes.

But now my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

Damn right, it’s mine not yours.

Whoever said that breastfeeding will cause breasts to shrink to smaller than pre-pregnancy size is full of shit. Even accounting for the weight difference, I’m larger now than I was then. That’s okay, I like these too. Even if it does make front button shirts a bit of a challenge.

In the mirror, I can look on, and reflect over, all aspects of my body, except for my face. I still cannot see my face as a whole. I can see lips, and nose, and eyes that hold a thousand expressions. Eyebrows that I rather like the unplucked look of. I can see the individual pieces, but I can’t see the whole.

That’s someone else’s face. Not mine.

That’s the face of a confident woman. That doesn’t give a shit what people think of her ethnicity. I stare at her, and see the strong jaw of someone that has endured the distasteful, and survived. The woman in the mirror is unbroken. The woman in the mirror seizes the world and forces it to bend the knee. Circumstance doesn’t shift her. She just flows around the obstacle and continues on. The woman in the mirror can’t be brought to her knees by a few words. That face, belongs to a empress, a sovereign, a goddess.

I can’t associate that face as mine. Not today.

But I know it is.

And I will take it as mine, one day.

Even if I have to dare snatch that experiential knowledge from the gods themselves.

And I will not be silent about it.

Make of that, what you may.

(Inspired by, and written for, Sunday Scribblings #313: “Reflect“.)