Ode/Apologia to/for My Body
Ode/Apologia to/for My Body
Body, I should be
Nicer to you
In my thoughts
Kinder in my words
For you’ve always
Been with me
Though I take you
For granted
Criticize you mercilessly
Protect you by depriving you
Of those who would love you
Lose patience with
your tiredness
your slowness
your fragility
your aging
your imperfections
We’ve been through
So much together
bruises
broken bones
humiliations
total hysterectomy
emergency gallbladder surgery
Two major abdominal surgeries
And I begrudge you
Your fatness
Your age
I treat you as a nuisance
An apparatus I have to maneuver
An encumbrance
You both humiliate and save me
I begrudge you your changes
Though you’ve been with me through all of mine
Such a nuisance—
Some thing I have
To feed and clean
And house and dress
And buy health insurance for
And take to doctor’s appointments
I have to make
And don’t want to go to
When really I should
Praise your resiliency
How you get me
From one place to another
Out of the apartment
Up the el steps
Down the subway steps
Off the bus
When we’ve been
Unceremoniously dropped off
And the dancing
We’re still dancing
Thank you for the dancing
Painting Image: Bather Gazing at Herself in the Water, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1910