For whom?

Every time I take mushrooms I’m reminded how useless bodies are. They’re always in the way. My limbs feel so foreign, so clumsy. I’m not this body. I’m just. . . an existence, a universe of thoughts. The body is dress. Excess. Superfluous.

But don’t we love it? By we I mean you.

I remember one summer I had a fling, and whenever we made love it felt like were trying to get closer to one another than our bodies could ever possibly allow. Our bodies felt in the way of what the sex was actually for.

He didn’t believe in God. Which was funny to me because he was the first time I ever felt sex as divine act, as two souls meeting.

Which just goes to show you we aren’t always conscious of everything at play. Because it wasn’t that for him, and even though I knew we weren’t going to be a lasting thing, I really relished discovering sex in a spiritual way. Feeling it like that, and understanding.

And sometimes you don’t make love but between kisses, someone embraces you and says “We are gods” and couldn’t you just die from the delight. Someone speaking to you in your language.

Your body is a temple. It’s a gift, he told me days later.

And it sat with me a little differently when I hadn’t even expected it to linger at all.

My body, a gift.

What an arbitrarily beautiful thing to say to someone. It’s a beautiful notion, not even in a flirtatious or personal way.

Just as a reminder.

I remember thinking a few months ago, as I was tending to my curls, how taking the time to moisturize and dress them made an obvious difference in how nice they looked.

And I thought of the way my mother always battled with my hair. Her preoccupation with products and setting and controlling what I could and couldn’t do with it. How much she wanted it to be tame.

I thought of how it’s so obvious that when you water things with positivity they can grow and flourish. As opposed to always trying to change them.

Beauty is a curious thing. Everyone admires it, but having it is maintenance and work. And possession; a gift for whom?

But we don’t cling so much these days to everything that’s already gone years now.

It was a moment in time, the lotion and dressing coating my curls, the hair gliding along my finger, and bouncing into position. It happens this way, moment by moment, that you grasp another lesson in the life.

And the life, the body and the arbitrary little lessons are all, everyday, their own gifts.

I wonder if there’s anything else he’d like to tell me. I wonder how many other things he could tell me, if he wanted to.

Tell me what you think before we both die