Photographer

Photographed by Darryl Strawser

Prime

Prime

I believe in my flesh and its appetites. Gazing, hearing, touching are divine, and each part of me is divine.

A miracle I am inside and out, and I make sacred whatever I touch or am touched from.

The scent of these armpits aroma released as prayer; this broken body finer than desecrated temples, and all the faiths.

You ask of being in my prime, kind sir

I no longer wish my crooked places could be made straight. I stare in the mirror now and its reflections. Seeing, listening, feeling are miracles and each part of me is a miracle.

I no longer want to inhabit someone else’s body. I inhale and reclaim what was lost when I was a child. I release the anger in my lower belly and genitals and taste, suck and scream.

What is prime? I no longer subscribe to an age, number or idea

The soft, small hands inflicted with disease caress her devotee; the round butt more perfect than geometry, the young, and all the able-bodied women. I exhale and sit with my body. I believe in my pleasures. I lovingly offer this body to him. We stare deep, everything is illuminated. We surrender and merge beyond our individual selves. I believe in desegregation of my body. No more blockages, spirit and mind healed. I now believe in feeling, touching and claiming my beautiful, heavenly, delicious, flawed, temporary home, my body.

I am a woman. In her prime. She was in me all along.

the unfolding

the unfolding

people stare
at a green eyed woman
do they know
about her body betrayal
she hears their
wonder

her own eyes look
at puffy hands
string bean legs
scars remind hidden flesh
her train wreck childhood

her young body
old

so eyes close
refuge
into ballerina child
gliding, to a sad violin
feeling her pain before betrayal

her eyes long
will men desire her

as a woman

will old/young body
scare them away

she returns
to dreams
unfolding a temptress
who devours man
or a nymph who dances

soon eyes must open
do open eyes see

she resists
dares body truth
wanting
her dreams

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