Imagining

Economies of loving and lovability have often, if not always, placed me in the furthest margins. Singling and obscuring me in my peculiarities.

I am a built up archive of rejection and internalized shame. My body a summation of features marked unlovable.

I’ve never known a world where my beauty was beauty. Born and confined into standards embedded within histories I had no say in creating, nor do I want to own, something is always too much or not enough, but never acceptable.

I attempt to imagine a world that delights in my beauty. Imagining beyond this unfamiliarity, beyond this impossibility. My imagination unimpaired by the unending cruelties my unbeauty inflicts.

I imagine being loved. Love being ordinary, within my reach,within my grasp. The all too-casual unhumaning ways I’m reminded I do not belong disappearing.

I imagine finding community. In relation. Surrounded by warmth and tenderness. Having care and affirmation extended easily, unsparingly, unceasingly. My consciousness freed from the abyss of neglect.

I imagine being desired. Hungered. Touched. Felt. Squeezed. Gripped. Caressed. Stroked. Cuddled. Fondled in sustained lust and devotion. Pursuing familiar and unfamiliar pleasures. Discovering new ways of desiring and being desired.

I imagine no longer going unseen. My dignity palpable, cemented, unquestionable.

I imagine a less hostile, less frightening, less exhausting, more breathable, more livable existence.

I imagine ordinary human ways of being, being mine too.