How I Found Her Body
She
Was the first body I knew
I inhaled her
Studiously studied her angles and shape
I enveloped her body which
Grown, unlike mine
I memorised as the blue print for what I'd become
I didn't know if I wanted her tits
I didn't know whether I liked or was disgusted by the matted hair in her armpits, tangled with dew
I didn't think I liked that the hair between her legs was dark when the hair on our heads was light
I didn't know whether I wanted her skin tags and moles that I picked, mindlessly, on the flesh of her collarbone
But I knew that I loved her softness
And the fat that hung around her stomach
I liked that the awkwardness of my body
My cheeks that still hung heavily
And my hips that weren't yet quite formed evenly
Might one day mould into hers
I loved that when we lay on the sofa watching one of her films
I could slot into the gap between her arm and waist
I loved that I could fit under her arm in photos on long walks up mountains and cling onto her body and fleece
I pushed my nose under her arms in photos in Greek bars
And I nuzzled my face into her chest in photos where
Surrounded by lots of other people
Hers was the only body I truly knew
And would one day become my own
When she died
I lost the blueprint that I had drawn out
The handbook that told me how my body would become hers
My body exploded in new directions
And I shed my cheeks and hips in grief
I grew
In ways I couldn't understand
And bloated with the weight of navigating my new body without her
I bled and sweated and asked if she too had tensed under pressure and felt tight and scared and panicked
I asked if her body, at 17, had been fearful of tearing and ripping and bursting
But the blueprint I had drawn hadn't anticipated asking questions like those
and my sketch of her body was filled in with primary colours
I stetched the softness that had tied me to her
And suddenly we didn't look the same
When I look at the photos now
of my body, not yet erupted,
clinging to hers
I realise that her body formed mine
But would never be the same