Your Body

By Sierra Buist

Published in the 2023 journal.

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Your body is a temple

What an ancient wonder

For centuries men have basked

for sanctuaries such as yours

Your body is an icon

Idle eyes idolize you

You’re caught in the eye of the beholder

Immortalized in the all-encompassing gaze

Your body is a currency

Your profile pressed into tokens

Gilded and preserved

And spent without regard

Your body is a work in progress

Shape-shift yourself into something smaller

Manifest a fuller figure

Validate your worth in vanity

But your body

is also an ancestral line,

the marks of history

are sown in your skin

Your body is a compilation

of every antecedent

that pieced your presence together,

the faces of your founders are your inheritance

Your body is nature itself

forcing its way through the world,

Its strength is a storm colliding with the coast,

Wild like the wind that pummels statues into dust

Your body is a miracle,

uniquely yours and unencumbered

adopt unadulterated empathy toward yourself,

cherish the wonder of withstanding time