NOTE: THIS POST CONTAINS A PARTIALLY NUDE, FAT, BLACK, DISABLED AND CHRONICALLY-ILL BODY.

I admire the rivulets of golden that stretch across my skin, marking my body as magnificent. Powerful. These streams of gold transfigure into streams of red just beneath the surface. Regenerated blood pumps life through me. I love my soft dimples and sweet rolls that glide down my back. I delight in their slow cascade of deep brown flesh. The scars on my skin signal the amount of life I have lived in this body. Weathered, I have lived.

In this body, I am free.

I surrender to the process of unfolding. I relinquish control and let down my defenses to understand where I still need to grow and expand. There is no battle I am trying to win.There is no power I want to acquire other than taking control of myths that my mind makes that keeps me isolated and afraid. Hidden.

There is no reward for perfection. Yet, there is so much to gain from leaning into wrongness and imperfection. My humanness and humility are one and the same.

Unfurl.

Uncoil.

Unwind.

Extend.

Let go.

I make space for what is within and around me. I surrender my will to what I have power over—my thought, my actions, my presence.

I am worthy of my own submission.

Here, underneath my beautiful Black skin, hot liquid blood is life incarnate.

Everyday is a new birth or rebirth.

A chance to see life in new ways with old eyes.

To breathe new air with old lungs.

I am devoted to the liberation of my flesh, my mind, my spirit.

I have nothing to prove and everything to gain—

with my mad flesh

in my non-normative body

through my embodied, divergent spirit—always out of sync and out of time.