Paperweight Poetry

I want to write you letters, to buy you flowers, to run my fingers through your hair. I know nothing about love, but I know how to do if perfectly, I think I would be a really good lover, I would be good at loving you. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings from watching films and reading books. I wish we could love each other without our bodies. My body can't quite fit around this soul, it is too large in some places and too small in others. I stretch and pull like taffy but there are too many miles of skin. I wish our souls could meet without our bodies, so you wouldn't know the tragedy of analyzing my eyes, the glances, the motion of limbs or lack of it. I wish you knew the buzzing ball of light and energy that is my soul, before you knew the vessels, skin, and hair that cover it. I want to draw you over me like a blanket and whisper to the universe in the space between our souls; and write you letters, and buy you flowers, and run my fingers through your hair...

I have bought every loofa, exfoliating glove, scrub brush, shave lotion, and hair removal cream, but I can never scrub or shave some things off of me. I cannot scrub the shame of my body, no matter how hard I push, I cannot scrub off all the miles of looping skin and lumpy cellulite, the gnarled twists of varicose veins, the deep swells of bruises rising from unknown places like ravens, I cannot shave off all of the hair, it just keeps growing back and coming back like a daily reminder pinned to the world's bulletin board of my tireless grotesquity in my raw and unadulterated form. I cannot scrub the stench of sexual assault off of me, or all the purple perfect fingerprint impressions you left on my skin. I cannot scrub the feeling of you off of me or shave away the shame that I wasn't strong enough to fight you off, the helplessness, I cannot scrub the feeling of weakness, of my body being powerless against yours, my voice, my protests, only eggshells to yours....