Your Body

Your Body
          Your body is a landscape of ins and outs and ins and outs, like waves crashing against an unsuspecting shore. In the temperate waters you ask it your questions, of why it loathes you so solidly, of why it must repeatedly belittle you, push you to the background, your ideas still clutched sorrowfully in your hands. Your opinions disregarded with no more than a laugh and a roll of the collective eye. It murmurs that it does its best. It makes your life the tranquil place you have come to survive on. It is angered at your biting of the feeding hand.
          It seeks approval without your permission, acceptance of the aesthetic kind. It takes its chance when your back is turned, when your thoughts are elsewhere. It makes excuses that embarrass us both. Sometimes I catch it whispering to passers by. I hear its apology, its constant pleading. It invites a perception of weakness, of tiredness in you. And what of you? You make it so easy. The shallow puddles it drops you in resist so much less than the thrust of the sea.
          Others open doors and pull out seats for it, your selfish, demanding body. We feel our hate for it amidst our misplaced admiration. The heads you turn walk slowly into lampposts and drive themselves up pavements into trees. We laugh at that, sometimes.
          I hear you pleading with it in the mornings as you dress it, hide parts of it, put parts of it on show. You ask it to behave. I see you sitting in front of your fickle mirror, stern eyed, telling your subjective whimsical reflection that you make the decisions today. It recoils at the punishment. It protests that you made it this way. That this is merely a reflection of what you asked for. But you don’t hear it. How could you?
          You suffocate your surface with intent, pin synopsis and pre-text to it, and then recoil at the attention you worked so hard for. You adorn your armour with precious metals, gifts from past admirers, the love tokens of the tongue-tied sad and lonely. Those who dared to dream that a perfect part of you could be property of them. You let them think it. Serves them right, you say.
          I stood in the doorway of the bathroom, talking to you, I was wearing those slippers you hate so much, hideous in fact, is what you called them. ‘It’s just so unfair’ you told me, as I watched you apply your skin creams. Anti-ageing, anti-gravity anti-change creams. You tease your nylon curls around tongs, encasing them in a shimmering coating, like gold. They become like coils of spring, detached from yourself, like singular perfect entities. I smile and nod, as you coat yourself in war paint, pretend to understand. I would have thought that if you could see anything, it would be pretence.
          You coat your nails time and time again in gentle swiping movements, the perfect symmetrical strokes blending together into blocks of startling red. It fills the air with a scent like paint stripper mixed with candy. I have come to love that smell over time.
          I watch you in silence and think the things that I could never tell you, of how beautiful you are, and how aesthetically perfect, and yet how little it matters to anything substantial or meaningful. I think of what lays behind your surface, viewed by only the very privileged, and almost always revealed by accident. I never call you beautiful to your face. I know the lack of confirmation worries you, but you would never dare say it, not out loud.
          Yesterday, your body and I went to a café. You had been unable to attend for a time, and I was sure you would catch up with us later. Your body acted its role as it always does. It got us to the front of the queue with a smile and an auto-piloted wink. The recipient glowed for a moment, feeling the electricity your flesh emanates so effortlessly. He didn’t hear your body sigh, or the mechanics as it trundled back to table, waiting so patiently for your return. I missed you that morning in the café. I was the only one.