Loving Your Skin is Never an Apology.

I will tell my daughter, this is
how you love your body:
you step deep into the earth,
and let your callouses line the ground.
Do not weep, tell your skin
you are a poem. Your veins blue
under your skin run like water,
do not break through the surface. You
cannot throw a stone into the center
of a lake and wonder why
the shoreline feels the echo. Love
the round slope of your hips,
and do not regret that you are
soft. If your ribs line your arched back,
a gate where there is no captive, you
protect them. They do
the same. Do not beg for a home
you weren’t born into, do not whittle
away at your frame like wood under
a carving knife. A tree grows,
do not pray for shrinking. Praise your
legs for carrying you,
for holding you when you dance
with a boy and he kisses your small
perfect mouth. A bud. I beg you understand
becoming is not perfection,
loving your skin is never an apology.

also shared on my tumblr