I am not perfect.

Me, a girl with freckles that appear all over my body, 

My body shaped like an over ripe pear 

topped off with hair undone because I gave up and just don’t care.

Hair that frames a face with a smile almost as crooked as the teeth filling it.

Me with my eyes the color of dirt and dead grass that hide behind glasses because they make me feel better.

Me with my lisp and slight stutter that was worse when I was a kid but, I bullied my tongue into submission so it lies flat enough that I can say, ‘Sally sells sea shells down by the sea shore’ almost acceptably if I strain hard enough.

Me with my hands that tremble like a leaf on a branch in late August about to fly off dead in the wind.

Me with my imperfect imperfections.

I am not perfect.

Then there’s you.

With your skin splatter painted by the sun on a body that is so yours it could never be anyone else’s.

You with your hair that rises and falls in all the right places around a face with a perfect smile and bright eyes that shine like you reached up and pulled them out of the night sky.

You with your tongue that slides out between your teeth when you say things like sassafras because it wants to see the world and refuses to sit and move like a normal tongue, but instead dances behind your teeth.

Dances almost as much as your hands at the end of your arms that are so full of joy, so full of jive, so full of life that they never stop moving because they don’t want to waste a second of it.

You with your perfect imperfections.

You are perfect.

I turn away from the mirror and remind myself,

I am you.

So thanks for making my imperfections perfect.