By Elizabeth Harper

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