The Earthscape of my Body Blesses Me and I, It

If you need a map to explore, tread softly, please.

When I saw your earthly self as a prompt, I flashed on the opening line of my favorite book by my favorite author, Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides:

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.

As I read the book, I think, no, Pat, geography doesn’t begin to cover it. But your eloquent prose makes those wounds riveting to read from the safety of my comfy chair.

Vivid, yes, and I wince with your pain. But so exquisite, the word poetry comes to mind, distracting me just enough to fully embrace all you have to say. Which is quite a lot.

Given all that, let me take your metaphor into the earthiness of my body and follow where it leads…

The landscape of my body lies to share its truths.

I begin by sharing how I once worked as a life drawing model for college art classes: Ohio State University and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

Artists learn to see the body as a landscape. One that they attempt to transport onto paper. It helps that during the longer poses, we’re lying down.

It helps that I’m a curvaceous female, so my horizon if you will, is full of hills and valleys. The hillocks of each tender breast have lost altitude over the years but gained in circumference — gravity doing to them what gravity does during the dance of time. Erosion, geologists might say. I prefer the term shifting.

The landscape of my body shifts over time.

Like when you turn the wheel in a kaleidoscope and the shards of color rearrange themselves into a new, equally delightful pattern. Poetry in motion, they say about dancers. Poetry in recline, they might say about me.

But sticking with geology, we could say that the scar running down my middle, from the base of my breasts to the tippy top of my pubic bone represents a shift in muscular tectonic plates. Surgery being the earthquake that opened me up so that invaded nodes could be excised.

Nothing that major doesn’t leave its mark. My belly is no exception. Every landscape needs its very own landmarks.

Facing up to my face…

My mouth and nose might serve as geothermal vents, letting the steam escape from fissures of nostrils and lips. The volcano’s ecology stipulates that side vents release all they can from time to time to keep the top from exploding.

The top being my head, where the once overgrown forest of my hair is now a tightly trimmed hedgerow. With a splash dash of purple streaking across a chestnut brown.

It’s not on the map, but there’s a secret cave where the buried treasure is carefully hidden. Nestled below a nest of thinning foliage, usually kept tightly sealed with Kegelian precision, she rests patiently.

Should there come a day when love calls her to open for the eagerly sanctioned exploration on the part of a gentle spelunker, she will be ready.

Though perhaps slower now, old rivers have not forgotten how to flow. The oceans of tears that have poured from the pools of my eyes serve the purpose of lubricating as well as detoxifying the ecosystem I am.

In the luscious landscape of my body, shifts happen. Time dances with the heights and hills of me, the forests and the valleys of me, and yet I remain, ever strong, ever soft, ever ready to spring into action and dive into the next element in the poem that is my life.

Speaking of poetry:

Getting Even with Gravity

Is an uphill battle.

The march of time across my body is always in a southerly direction.

I’m letting gravity have its way with me — cause otherwise it’s an uphill battle I’m not prepared to fight.

Were I was, it would involve a suit of modern armor — perhaps more form-fitting Spandex than rubber, elastic or chain mail from days of yore… But you can have your wonder bras And Spanx, thank you very much.

I will relish the caresses of fresh breezes between my breasts and kneeses for as long as I comfortably can.

And when every last breath has left my body, deck me out in full regalia, girdle me up, cinch me in, push me out, redden my skin…

Make me up like a doll in corpse bride splendor one last time, before the final torch’s fiery Baptism melts me down to ashes

and your precious hands cast me into the winds where I finally get even with gravity.

Thank you, Diana C. for this provocative, evocative prompt!

Marilyn Flower writes political humor and satire to delight socially and spiritually conscious folks. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, where she writes about faith and prayer. Five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times. Stay in touch!