"For years of my lifeI treated my body like a fixer-upperOr a home improvement project.Maybe a new..."

“For years of my life

I treated my body like a fixer-upper

Or a home improvement project.

Maybe a new coat of paint will

Make me worth something this time.

Maybe if we knock out a few walls

And build a walk-in closet,

There will be room in me for all the love

My heart pumps out like blood

Like tap water.

Maybe I can build a levee to hold it all in.

It took until I was nineteen,

With a Black&Decker buffer

Trying to smooth the cellulite out of my thighs,

It took until I had broken my own back over my knee.

It took until I was aching

From all the empty rooms in my renovated house

To realize that a body is not a rental.

A body is not a work-in-progress.

A body is not something to be ashamed of.

They gave me names that stuck

Like coffin nails in my bones.

I gave them years of believing they were right.

I am not a town home.

I am a goddamned temple.

Frightened hearts leave their hymnals at my feet.

I spread my arms and take up space, I am sprawling.

Eight stories high with a heart like climbing ivy.

They told you lies.

Girls are not just small things

With tiny hands and bleeding hearts.

Girls are big as the ocean with mouths like the Barrier Reef.

Girls carry love in the bend of their shoulders

That could bring a country to it’s knees.

When I say I am bigger

Than the things that try to hurt me,

I mean it literally.

I am not ashamed to be a big woman.

I’ve had mountains in me from the day I was born,

And shame on you, if you are too small

To reach them.”

- Mountains, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)