i love my hair. i love the way it’s growing out, how soft it is, the bountiful specks of silver, my natural brown color, the texture of it beneath my hands, the smell of my scalp on my hands after i touch my head. its oils. its swirls and patterns.
i love my nails. i’ve never grown them out before - never wanted to, really, and they always flaked and peeled - but since i’ve been eating better (and taking calcium!) they’re really strong. it seems like it wouldn’t take much work, or be a point of pride, but it is - i’ve never been healthy enough to maintain long nails, and now i am. i have to touch things differently; i have to be cognizant of not scraping them against the zipper on my fly, of not gripping someone’s hand too hard - they bring me back into my body, i always have to know where they are, how to navigate the situation, how to balance their delicacy and their strength.
i love my belly, my stomach, my gut. i like the word gut - the u in gut, its openness, its place between two hard consonants like the bones of my ribs, holding my softness open and making that space. i like that i can feel it expand when i breathe, i like that i breathe now, that i feel safe to. i love my rolls, i don’t have many, but i love having hands gripping them firmly and then letting go. it’s an incredibly grounding feeling. i like where the flatness of my pyramidalis meets the roundness and overhang of the fat i carry on my belly; i like that there are dimensions, and layers apparent, and that touching parts of my abdomen one could feel soft skin, plush fat, taut muscle, bone.
i love my armpits. sometimes i look at in the mirror to see how the hair’s coming along; often, i left my arms to smell what i smell like. tonight, there’s a depth to it, and it’s a little bit salty, a little bit spicy. maybe umami is the right way to describe it, its richness and roundness similar to taste. i like being able to smell myself; it’s how i know i’m here, in some way.