Natural Light
It’s the ferocious pursuit of the young to make themselves fall in love
with the shapes their hair makes on the pillow, the colours their legs make in the bath
abstract overpriced underwater never enough.
Now I’m home I’ve never hated anything less than the body that
this house made.
I romance myself with hot showers and long walks
trace the lines of tattoo and chicken-pox scar on my skin;
plan for more. A tree on my upper arm, a graze
on my ankle from a summer spent hiking in the
Appalachian mountains, where I would love to go.
Wearing the clothes I left behind because they spoke of an old self –
maybe I want to remember her. She liked flowers.
I’ve always liked the way I look in natural light.
If I start to wonder if someone else would – ah, that’s the danger.
I love my body like song – maybe beautiful like a really good bass-line.
You can feel it in your back teeth. Harder to hate yourself
from miles away. Love my body like the trees –
sunlit, quivering, tilting with the wind.
Daisy Harris
Daisy Harris Poetry 