Dear freckles,

a love-ish letter from the part I love the least to the part I love the most.

I envy you. 
I envy the ease at which you fade 
in and out with the weather. 
The way the sun bows with outstretched arms, 
pleading with you to fall into them 
and be awakened. 
How the larger of you are the ‘beauties’, 
marks rubbed tenderly with oil, perfumed 
and draped in fabrics that catch and billow. 

I feel badly, 
badly for those of you lost in folds of judgment,
meant to contain only me.
Those of you who do not draw life 
from the sun, 
who are never asked to dance 
simply because you were so unfortunate 
to have been born on my ridges; 
shamed by association, it seems. 

I know we are of the same stardust, 
I know we are two imperfect petals 
of the same snapdragon. 
But she doesn’t know it. 
She doesn’t see how the imperfections 
of you 
are mirrored in the imperfections 
of me. 
Maybe she doesn’t want to. 

What a thing it would be to feel wanted as you are, 
cheered for simply existing.
Were I to disappear altogether
I dare say I would not receive a smile even then. 
Perhaps because others fake with pencil and ink,
what she comes by so naturally in you.
And I am still standing alone on the shell
that Venus floated in on – a soft kind of beauty
lost to simpler times.
 
She pokes and pinches me 
often, and harder than she probably should – 
usually on the days where she’s 
struggling to feel good 
because of something that isn’t my fault. 
But I am willing, a space to discard her hurt,
a fleshy handful easily sucked in under bony ribs,
something to try to control, to hide.
Perhaps that was my purpose all along.

It is strange, though, that there is such a thing as being too soft, 
when her very soul is the stuff of butterfly wings 
and warm honeycomb. 
I guess some forms of softness are a liability. 
I guess I am such a form. 
But in a world that changes its mind as frequently 
as the sea sighs and changes the clouds, 
I do not know what is the right way to be
until I am already made wrong for it.

I do not know how to harden myself
despite having known many hard things. 
For even you, 
the most cherished of us all, 
do not stand at attention, unbending.
Even you turn and run from skies of gray slate 
readying to unburden themselves.
Even you soften when the air chills, 
signaling your retreat into milky layers where it is warm 
and still smells of summer lavender. 

Tell me, what is it like to be told,
“I love you, rest deeply”?
To tingle with compassion, to be invited to heal slowly? 
What does love feel like when it isn’t echoing – 
a wish, forced and looping around in emptiness,
worthless until it brings something real in return?
Why is absence of struggle required to accept me?
The whole two handfuls of me – without contingency,
or the absurdity of justifying something beyond control?

Dearest freckles,
I envy you, but I also thank you.
I thank you for simply being
one of those gorgeous things
that was made
to do what it does perfectly
without at all being perfect.
You remind me, patiently, that
I am also one of those things.

Yours, the soft belly