Portrait of a Woman’s Body

by JOHN YATES
Original Paintings by Abe Rattner

(“Portrait of a Woman’s Body” can be read as short fiction consisting of a series of interwoven interior monologues that are projected exteriorly. It also may be seen as a prose poem for performance by two actors, or as an easily produced one-act play with two characters and simple stage design: a very thin nude woman looking at herself in a full-length mirror, and a man sitting on the edge of a bed as if he is watching a woman sleep. The characters might occupy different parts of the same stage, with changes in lighting focusing on one, then the other. Or, they may be placed in the round, or intermingled with the audience. In the final sequences, it may be appropriate for both characters to be illuminated at the same time.)

I scare myself.

My color is always wrong. Sometimes I look gray. Sometimes yellow. I look like I am going to fucking die.

I don’t want to die.

I hate this mirror. I hate seeing myself like this. I want to live, but all I can see is how sick I am. How fucking sick.

But I can’t stop looking at myself in the mirror.

Look at me, for Christ’s sake. Skinny as a rail. Lost 30 pounds since summer. Down to 95 now. Color fucked up.

It’s not fair. This is the first time in my life I know I can be happy. I know I can. It is right here at my fingertips. But my body is fucked.  

I don’t even know why I am talking to this mirror. Guess it beats the alternatives. Guess I can’t pretend I can forget about it anymore.

How frail you look when you are sleeping. How tired. Your thinness frightens me.

I can’t stop seeing the irony. How beautifully thin and lithe you seem when you are moving. How alive. How your body arches to my touch when we make love. How it vibrates with passion, and how your touch feels like the essence of love and life. 

And yet it is frightening to watch your body as you sleep. Your scars. Wounds. Your thinness that looks like your body is devouring itself from the inside.

I am afraid for you.

And yet your face is at peace while you sleep beside me. I love to watch you sleep, and know that you almost never sleep when we are not together. Our lovemaking is a gift of peaceful sleep, healing sleep. It means everything to me to be able to give this gift to you. I hope that I am not imagining it.

I love to watch your face as you sleep. Your lips are strangely full, sensual. Heartbreakingly sensual. 

You smile in your sleep. Your lips constantly form into smiles and your closed eyes wrinkle into smiles, too. I watch your nipples harden, your aureolas swell.

I know you are dreaming of me. Of us.

I am overwhelmed.

I can’t understand what you see in me. I look at myself. I see used. Used up. Broken. You say that you see a beautiful woman. I try to be beautiful for you. I try.  

You touch me, softly. Very softly. Your fingers trace the lines of my body. Your hands caress my thighs, my breasts. You are smiling, grinning. I love it when you are happy.

I touch myself and think of you. Feel your touch through my own fingertips. I feel myself as you.

My heart breaks.

There were so many fingers and hands before yours. So many. They were not gentle or loving. They tried to possess me, to own me. They made me an object. They made me feel fucked, like a piece of meat to be consumed. They penetrated me like an aggressor, ripped me open. They took what they wanted and left.

I tried to pretend that this was what I wanted of them. I played their games, and I played them well. My father taught me the game when I was a little girl.

I remember that little girl’s body. She never remembered innocence. She never looked in the mirror and saw beauty, never felt the wonder of herself.

I still can’t look in the mirror without wanting to scream.

How can I look at you and not see all that came before me?

I am amazed at your gentleness, your warmth. Your ability to give love, and desire to receive love.

It would be easy to dissect our love and say that you are looking for the trust, affection and protection you never had from your father. Perhaps I am looking for something quite similar. Acceptance and the feeling of being wanted, truly wanted, that I have never had.

How can I say this is wrong? Every child deserves those things, as does every adult. They should be our birthright.

Sometimes we have to reclaim our own birthright by whatever means we can. I offer no apologies for trying to reclaim mine. I feel only love when you try to reclaim yours.

Cynics would say that makes us co-dependent.

I would much rather live in your world than theirs.

I touch myself and know I have imagined your touch all of my life.

Did I conjure you?

Are you real?

I have felt you in my blood and bones, calling to me. Singing to me. Now you are here in the flesh. I melt into you. My body burns for you.

I feel my wetness, and my fingertips become your tongue. Caressing me. Loving me. My breath comes in gasps. My body convulses.

And I curl into you, and sleep.

Sleep. I never knew I could sleep. I never knew I could dream of being loved. I never knew I could escape the nightmares.

The nightmares.

My father slapping me to the bed. Ripping off my clothes. Fucking me. Falling asleep and snoring with all of his weight on top of me.

Holding me down while other men fucked me.

Other men. All of my life. Men throwing me down on beds and fucking me.

Nightmares.

I am afraid to sleep. I lie awake for hours, trying to think of you. Trying to cast a spell to bring you into my dreams.

When I look at my body, I see all that came before you.

Until my touch becomes yours.

Until my body melts into yours.

Until I can sleep.

I want to cover your scars with soft kisses.

I wish I could lay my hands on your body and heal all of the broken places, erase the scars, make your body whole again. But I can’t. I know I can’t.

What I can do is kiss you all over. I can tell you that you are beautiful, and I will be telling the truth. You are beautiful. Your scars tell me how many men have tried to destroy your beauty, and the way we make love tells me how completely they failed.

That is the most beautiful thing about you. Your scars are absolute proof that there is a core of beauty within you that could not be destroyed. The way we make love, the way you open yourself to me and want me to open myself to you, is a testimony to the power of human love, and to courage. 

I gently trace the burn scar that covers most of your abdomen. I cannot imagine the terror you must have felt when this happened to you. I cannot imagine that anyone would do this to another human being, and yet, someone did.

Nor can I imagine how someone could shatter your pelvis with punches and kicks, or throw you down a stairway again and again until your spine fractured. But they did.

When your lips press hard against mine in passion, I can imagine them opening in a scream as fire sears into your flesh. My kiss softens, and my lips move down your body to your abdomen. How I wish I could kiss away your screams. How I wish I could simply erase them from your body and spirit.

When my tongue reaches your clitoris, I imagine that I am loving you back to innocence. When your body becomes fire, I imagine the flames of your love devouring those other flames, your cries of joy and pleasure erasing the screams of pain and terror.

If only I could give you that.

I am covered with scars. Sometimes I look at them and become afraid. Sometimes they make me feel ugly, as if they are the outward manifestation of much deeper scars that can never be erased. Sometimes they make me feel hopeless, or just numb.

I don’t even remember how I got most of them. The worst of them are empty spots in my memory.

When I think of you, none of it matters. None of it. I look in the mirror and see my crooked smile, and it becomes a silly grin for you.

Mostly, when I look at my body, I just feel broken. I look at my skin color, watch the pounds drop away from me one at a time and see my muscles wither and atrophy. I feel a weariness that paralyzes me. I wince when I feel the kicks and punches that have destroyed my liver.

My liver is failing. There is a good chance I am going to die soon. I see that, too, when I look at my body. I cannot hide from this reality.

Knowing this, do I have the courage to love you? Can I allow you to love me? Can I let you love as I wither away and turn to dust?

It really is ironic. I spent most of my life punishing myself with anorexia. Starving myself into a skeleton. Cutting myself. It was the only way of hiding from the fear of death, without having the courage to be alive.

Now I want to be alive. I want to be here for years and years to love you, to love myself, to love life, but my body is consuming itself from the inside out and I can’t stop it. Most days, I can’t even stand the thought of food.

My body is betraying me by starving itself to death. My body is dying when my heart cries out for life.

Ironies.

Fuck.

Will you dance with me?

I love the way you dance when you run from your car to meet me. You dance and twirl and throw yourself into my arms.

Always swirling, dancing. Joy exploding out of you.

Our lovemaking. Sometimes dancing slowly, holding each other tightly. Our bodies rock to the same rhythm, the same heartbeat, and we dissolve into each other.

There is no pain. No terror. No nightmares. No loneliness. We are all that exists in the universe. For this moment, there is only you and I.

There is no death in us now. Only life.

We are alive and in love. Our bodies are dancing. We are song.

You are smiling now in your sleep. You are dreaming me, and I am dreaming you.

I close my eyes and imagine myself in the mirror of your eyes. Seeing myself as you see me is the hardest thing I have ever done. I am seeing my own dreams come to life.

I am afraid. 

Yet, I can’t stop touching myself. I can’t stop feeling your hands and lips on my body.

The fear is washed away.

Everything is washed away, except us. All of it.

I open my eyes and see them radiating with love. I am smiling. You are smiling, too. My lips are full and parted, and I kiss my reflection in the mirror. I pull away and look at the moist marks on the glass. I feel myself grow wet.

I know now that I have the courage to ask you to face this with me. I know now that I have the strength to accept your love while I am fighting for my life and, in perhaps a different way, while you are fighting for your own.

I love feeling the way you touch my body.

We are moving together, rocking endlessly.

I trace the line of your stomach as you lie sleeping.

I cannot resist you.

My lips softly kiss yours, but you do not awaken. Your nipples grow hard to my touch, and I kiss them as softly as I can. I feel your body moving toward mine, softly, gently.

My kisses follow the line of your stomach, anoint the burn scars on your abdomen, tangle in your hair and seek out your clitoris. Softly I kiss you until you begin to stir.

You press into me, gasp and arch your body toward me.

You are waves, flowing outward from the center of the ocean.

I come into your arms and am lost within your embrace.

Completely lost. 

Completely found.

I move slowly before my eyes in the mirror.

You touch me,

Touch me.

I am electric.

I am alive.