Brief Landing on the Earth's Surface

On This Earth

On This Earth To love my own, my body, to know withom saying, Iq,s, you aregoodlegs, and feet and stomach and arms, good, and the spaces under my arms, and (he brown pigmems splashed across my back like tea leaves. To love my body the way I sometimes love astranger's: a woman on the subway, tired, holding her two bags. a child slumped against her like anomer sack as the train stops and starts and the child says something so quiedy no one else can hear it, but she leans down, and whispers back, and the child curlscloser. I would love my body the way a mother can love her child. or the way a child will love anyone who gives it a home on this earth, a place without which it would be nothing, a dry branch at the window ofa lit room. '5 ...