honey

I was 4 years old when I asked my mother how to be skinny. Tiny, mini, I was no bigger than her pinky, my mother looked herself in the mirror and sighed. That was the day I learned to “pull my shoulders back and suck in my tummy”.

I was thirteen years old when honey first dripped down my thighs. Eyes wide as I sized up my body In the mirror, my mothers words echoed in my ears, “you’re a woman now”.

The first body of a woman I worshipped wasn’t my own. My skin aglow under touches good and bad.

I was fifteen, starving myself to look lean, not too keen with the way my body bent in half for others.

It wasn’t until twenty three when I first traced the curve of my hips with finger tips, loved the way words fell off my lips, took naked pics. Gripping, grasping, gasping in awe of each bump on my skin and fold of my tummy. mourning the years I wished for anything other than this body.

I am twenty five and touches are soft, two years with them waft by, warmth thawing subtle frost. I can’t begin to map the kisses left in the moments they taught me how to worship myself.

poem by Shannon F.

vestal virgins are a namesake of virgos, the star sign ruled by mercury. they were the only group of Roman women who were granted the basic legal rights that male citizens possessed automatically. they were free from their father's rule, could vote, could make wills and own property. the unchaste Vestal was often buried alive.