At some point in my girlhood, undefined,
I drew in a broad breath which I never released.
So long I’ve been the lone moon of a solar system forsaken.
Acne —
pockmarked like a seagull scooped out the pulp of my face,
cratered like a sallow gray planet
marinating in a toxic atmosphere of discontent.
Oh, to trade this jaundiced Jupiter of a body
and join the constellation
of naked silhouettes in my orbit.
Picture me standing there, bare,
nude but not indecent.
Be imaginative if you dare.
Oh, to be liberated and free,
thighs, paunch, cellulite as far as I can see.
Is it so great a sin
to breathe easy and rest content in my skin?
Sophomoric shame burdens my bones,
my unpolished self,
a trembling vessel of raw emotion.
Nostalgic for a time I didn’t exist,
sheltered safe inside my mother.
Call them scars by any other name —
collagen,
damaged tissue marring my surface,
memoirs of trauma on the landscape of my body,
raised fibers of flesh erupting from under,
bursting from below, uncontainable.
Hideous.
How can anyone love these lesions?
Stomach these stigmatas?
Who could digest my defaced, my disfigured, my vandalized facade?
Ridden with rosacea, lifeblood pooling under my cheeks.
Standing now in riptide, I feel the pull.
Baptism —
I crave the shock of cold plunge,
to emerge clean, pure,
and shake off the scorn of stares like dripping ocean excess.
See me crouched like a sunning creature,
head upturned?
Longing to feel alive under golden light,
thrust from the mundane.
I beckon the breeze,
sea salt on tongue and harsh grains gripping my toes.
I worship the sea and praise small luxuries.
Come, tide, and slough off these scars.
Weather me, waves, and
let my imperfections whirl away in undertow.
If I bleed, all the better.
May it spill into the sea and attract sharks,
who circle and chomp at my insecurities.
May my metallic scent pervade the air,
and the clotted crust of wounds heal over,
red planet rust.
Oh, to slip out of these scars,
this marred surface of mars.
Scrape it all away.
The urge to cast off clothes, and be reborn
in renaissance.
To shed this exoskeleton like a serpent,
and abandon this battered skin on the beach.
To shake this shame and strip —
unabashed as the day I materialized, immaculate,
from the womb.
Oh, to step from shadow,
visceral miseries of my psyche exposed by daylight.
A naked nymph,
descending like a pale apparition on the unsuspecting masses.
My spine won’t shiver,
nor will I shrink within shell.
I meet their gaze steady,
don’t flush or recoil.
I float with the best of them,
one with the rest of them,
and let my spirit surge like a seagull,
away from high tide.
Kya Brooks ’25 (kyabrooks@college.harvard.edu) writes poetry for the Independent.