I wrote this poem as a response to the “Self Doubt” prompt we receive every year during community weeks in Creative Writing. I have both enjoyed and been surprised by the ways in which the poetry I’ve produced from this prompt has evolved. This year I focused on how the loss of someone important in your life can negatively affect self confidence, and drastically shift your perception of your appearance and personality. I’ve noticed recently that one person can often have an unanticipated level of power over your personal identity, and it is important to learn how to love yourself without them. 

Both Stretches

It is the memory coming back

that cuts a crescent moon into my wrist

like the fake knife you kept buried under your bras and band Ts.  

It’s only the memory that digs beneath my epidermis

and deeper until the blood turns white,

and it’s the image of your one dimpled grin growing sun damaged

on my bedroom wall.

Why can’t I remove the peeling tape

that tethers you to me?

When you loved me 

I didn’t need to try to love myself. 

It was easy, 

for your gentle fingers stayed woven through my curls,

and you called my amorphous thighs beautiful

until they morphed into something

that I could call beautiful too. 

When I hated the architecture of my stomach

you’d touch me until a palace grew from the fat of my belly. 

When I picked at the scabs on my body

you’d kiss me until I forgot what injury felt like. 

We were careless skeletons thrashing our bones

at punk shows on Thursday nights,

rocks and dirt forming a new layer of skin on our arms. 

Back then the memory couldn’t break my flesh,

because we were the memory,

we were our childhoods and our adolescence locking fingers,

and we were our elder years too.

I still remember this but

the silhouette of you has changed. 

It looks more like me now,

alone, kicking my legs up in the air like I’m angry with the sky.

In my memory it’s the shadow of only me 

elongated by the gravel beneath an abandoned mosh pit,

and I am dancing with my shy palms.

The scent of tears has begun to make me nauseous.

I look down at my thighs and they are shapeless again.

I cannot find where my skin ends and yours begins,

so I rub my legs until they’re pink and numb

as I search for a way to move you. 

I refuse to love the folds of my hips anymore

because of how they strum the melody of Hole’s “Celebrity Skin,”

and whisper the lyrics to your favorite riot grrrl song.

I cannot admire my belly cascading over my belt anymore,

for the sweat on my stomach tastes like your breath 

after dissolved SSRIs and sweet coffee. 

Your love for my body,

my voice and how I used it,

gave me permission to love myself too.

I watch as the blurred line of where our shadows separate cracks, 

and my skin is ruptured by the memory of 

you. Between both stretches.