I am young
when my mother tells me that the lady from work says to push the flesh covering my collar bones downwards towards my chest. I should do it everyday in the shower. So for years, I sculpt my body in hopes that I will chisel myself the perfect décolletage.
I am barely even a teen when
I am told that I am dirty because of my armpits. I respond by taking too many showers, paint over the bruised crevices with lemon juice, aloe vera, limes, pineapple enzymes, creams, gels, acids. But discolouration is not something my skin is good at. Even when rubbed raw with the sharpest of bristles, I remain as the only human tester in this lifelong research for beautiful pits.
I am already almost a woman
when people identify a girl in school by the stretch marks behind her knees. I do too, even though I have the same spider web veins across my shoulder, splayed across my hips. Today I wonder if we both use the same oils to lighten the parts of our skin that could not catch up with our flesh.
By the time that I am finally called ‘beautiful’, I do not understand what the word means because the price of beauty has always been the collective efforts of all my subtraction. I knead my body into shape for a lingering glance, hide my colours from roving eyes, my flesh is only the price of the lingerie I quietly stash away; but 'beauty' is a fleeting word, 'sexy' is the price I pay.