As a boy, in manhood reformed,

ripeness pending the jaw grown into my face,

fat cells pressed like grapes between muscle and bone,

and now, women touch me.

Finally they trace my form,

contours of stone with brittle finger tips.

And know how I’d watch them praise my neighbor’s horse

so many times in boyhood.

And know how I’d ache to bury my soul into his,

rip, shred through the muscle they loved to touch,

dare feel their fingertips.

As a boy, crouched behind purple brush,

I was oddly bare and my neck had no girth,

one pillar over-burdened.

And when they laughed, the acids in my stomach turned to shame,

which boiled and bore holes in the lining of my intestines,

and the mirror whispered.

Mirrors whispered then –

Crafting rumors about my concave chest and

how fat hung on my rubber waist band.

They hissed about arms that dangled to my knees and sloping shoulders beneath

thirty year old men who stood like stones.

I thought, “that was it.”

It being the end to curled shame and hissing mirrors.

It being the path to small female hands

and horse-like prestige,

and I grew;

muscles in my arms lengthened then balled up like grapefruit,

tender fat melted to my feet and soaked my socks with sweat.

And now, like a stone,

I stand spraying winter steam through my nostrils,

idly waiting for spring to come,

so that women in white flower dresses

will carry their daughters from a shaded porch

and place them at my knees,

thus praise my face the way I’d watch them do,

so many times in boyhood.