If and Only If: A Journal of Body Image and Eating Disorders Winter 2015 | Page 126

Count the Rings (of my body)

Nichole Pientka

I.

Used to think I had old feet

Pruned after steaming shower, blue ridges

Standing at attention, rooting my Mangrove tree balance

II.

My mother’s veins

Tangling purple bundles on

My calves I got from Dad and kicking muddy soccer balls

III.

Enflamed joints creaking: knees, hips, shoulders, elbows,

Fingers numb in frozen weather claim Dad’s arthritis

And Mom’s bad circulation

IV.

Teardrop scar on my right forearm

From fidgeting while nurse shot weak measles

Under my four-year-old flesh never marked

V.

Except central line punctured my premature infant chest

Resulting in bullet-sized hole in right breast

Reminder of my ugly fight for life

VI.

Now my skin laden with albino cheetah spots

Bleached and raised in sunlight among freckles

Each dot a sign of innocence left?

VII.

Short limbs toned by religious exercise

Long fingers, chipped turquoise nails, comb highlighted strands

Too many curves to be worshipped by fashion bibles

VIII.

Brush my brain with bright blooms left and right

With darkness creeping from coup contra-coup concussions

Brain-stemming into bent spine

IX.

Count twenty-one rings under my small gray-blue eyes

In a misted mirror, blurred behind dense leaves of doubt

And branching questions…