Flawless is born in my thighs

that stretch wide and thick 

and rest peacefully like African Mountains on an abundant coast.

time has carved purple escarpments along their ridges

Lines in the flowing motion of growth

They are raised,

 tilted, acute mounds to the soft glow of sun, alert to the head of the wind

and wise to weight and soreness and womanhoods wet pains and joys

They are my hieroglyphics

Lines that drip like plum juice

Like black nectar

Dye the hue of night, infused with time and its blossoming springs.

Flawless in that the brown hair atop my head is never fully straight

The coil and kink is dampened by chemicals which I do not regret

But I am too lazy to dance the difficult two-step of kemptness.

So I furl them up into buns

Thick, bushy, unwelcoming

Yet clean and about like a robin nest’s curve.

Flawless sums up my being

Not because I am without error

But because I am completed by my maladies

There is no beauty in them-

In my selfishness

My near-sightedness

My pride

My cellulite

My uncombed  head.

Only genuine grit,

Reality and altruism.

Because without these things I am a liar

Untrue and dishonest to the World of God

Axis bent only because my own weight bears upon it

My feet trod beneath it,

My heart rests in it.

My weight, my heart, my feet…My uncombed head.

They make me more myself than my name and their syllables

They make me recognizable to black eyes warped in a smudged looking glass

I look into my stretch marked skin and I have no choice but to grin,

To giggle

To wail with laughter that whistles through tight lungs and squeezed bladders.

Because realization is sweet

And how good it is to be home.

Home inside this marred skin bathed in coconut soap.

Inside this bushy head with a mind distracted, dysfunctional, and painfully nostalgic.

Yes,

Let me snuggle close to warmth of my flaw’s hearth

For they keep me warm and ward away the chill of doubt.

Yes, this, this is flawless.

It is serenity in the sacred being,

Malleable, born an infant to my palms,

Suckling on the teet of confidence and desire.

Delightful as the flutter of a moth’s wing

Fat as a baby’s cheek in its form

And just as tender in its touch.