The Journey Inward

"Oh, precious baby!  Your presence is so powerful,
Our world you truly glorify,
You're a masterpiece-so perfect and incomparable!"

"My legs have rolls, my belly is deplorable,
My body makes me want to cry!"
          "Oh, precious baby!  Your presence is so powerful!"

"Why must I look like this?  Why am I so pitiful?
And gender?  How should I identify?"
          "You're a masterpiece-so perfect and incomparable!"

"My hair is dull and lifeless, my ugliness is palpable,
These bags under my eyes horrify!"
          "Oh, precious baby!  Your presence is so powerful!"

"I'll never be beautiful, it's simply unattainable,
My face is off, my nose awry."
          "You're a masterpiece-so perfect and incomparable!"

Would a baby talk this way?  It's truly inconceivable!
But over time, we objectify.
          "Oh, precious baby!  Your presence is so powerful!"
          "You're a masterpiece-so perfect and incomparable!"

These pictures are of my new grandniece, Emi.  She was born April 6 at 2:40 am and is everything her parents and our family dreamed of.  My nephew and his wife shared her first photo shoot with us and I oohed and aahed at her rolls and chub and puffy eyes.  It made me stop in my tracks to think how these are the very qualities so many of us, particularly women, diet and exercise to rid ourselves of!  How our opinion of health and beauty changes over time!  How rigid we become, how we box in beauty and its expression.  How we let society and social media and celebrities and filters tell us what is acceptable, leaving so many feeling terrible, horrible, and as we age, invisible.  

The poem is a Villanelle, with 19 lines in 5 tercets and a quatrain and 2 rhymes throughout.  The first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and at the close the quatrain.