A storm tears the sea apart, waves crashing against the hull of a ship. Lightning arcs down and forks against the water, thunder crashing down around the lonely ship battling the elements.

"Prince Jesper! Step away from the taffrail!" A burly sailor shouts over the noise. A wildly laughing figure, merely a boy, grins at him, rain pelting down and drenching his plain white shirt.

"Oh please, Enok, I'll be fine. It's only a storm, isn't it?"

"Your Highness-"

A roaring wave breaks over the stern of the Ibis II and the belaying ropes snap. The sail is torn away, and the mast cracks under the hurricane-like wind. Slowly, the splintering sound is followed by the ship nearly cracking in half as the mizzen mast topples in a shower of wooden planks.

The boy-prince is swept up with the wave as the ship collapses. Enok's dead eyes glaze over as the experienced sailor's blood drips down the wooden stake his body is impaled on. The ship sinks into the forbidding waves. 

But the boy is still alive. His cries go unheard - everyone is silent. His screams are ripped away by the knife-like wind, cutting his cheek. And everything fades into darkness. The last thing he feels are gentle hands around his waist.

He awakes with the light streaming into his face, drying his salt-water ridden clothing. The warm, fine sand beneath him tickles his hands. And a shadow looms over him - a shy girl with a shawl wrapped around her head. Her calf-like eyes glimmer as she realises his identity. And it all fades back into darkness.

He sits up in a soft bed. He knows not his surroundings. Where is that girl that he awoke to on the beach? Where is he?

He had to find that girl. She must have saved him.

Down

the street

from secure fortune

homeless sleep in tents

under a sheltered graffiti bridge

each day I drive past disheartened

by the vast difference between

life of golden birthed

and those forsaken

who accidentally

weren't.

Walk amid the tombstones and listen well,

Hear the stories of the triumphant dead,

Tested have been those who under ground dwell,

Heed their instruction while still here to tread,

Whispering softly they beg thee come close,

Down to the sanctified ground place an ear,

The mystery of life shall be disclosed,

To he who is truly willing to hear,

All in heaven, in the pit, or between,

Have faced judgement for every earthly sin,

Condemnation in life has too been seen,

By the voices of disapproving men,

Those who here lie learned at hour of death,

This marked lesson too late understood,

Tis’ offered now, to thee fore your last breath,

The perished their own error to make good,

Keep forever these words breathed from afar,

Bethink them over and over again,

Others find lacking everything you are,

Substance and vitality will they drain,

Days spent weary from pleasing all others,

To the end of time wasted my mortals,

In this hardship each one then is smothered,

Corpses walking round between earth’s portals,

The key then is this, muttered from the grave,

Men will decree unworthy each action,

Live by daring purpose, mighty and brave,

For only one’s inner satisfaction.

I'm hidden beneath these cardboard confines

Muffled by masking tape

Damned by dust.

Unknown,

And alone,

Haunted by perpetual sighs.

Reach in and retrieve

Inside the box that's keeping me.

Alive, I'll be-- filled with ranine divinity.

Find me,

Expose me,

I do not mind.

I am unlike any other kind.

I.

The first time I thought about my body

I was a sticky thirteen.

My religion teacher was always telling us,

"Your body is a temple,"

which just meant,

"Don't have sex,"

because

you know

Jesus Hate Sluts.

Ten years later, everyone says,

"LOVE YOUR BODY,"

and I can't stop checking myself out in every mirror I pass.

"Love your body," whispered like a prayer

& all I hear is,

"Your body is a temple.

Your body is a temple.

Your body is a FUCKING TEMPLE."

What a joke:

I never hated my body

until someone told me not to.

II.

"Your body is a temple."

My body is a wasteland.

My body is an empire, long-fought-over and oft-desecrated by a war I didn't start, fought with curling irons and tubes of lip gloss.

My body is a canvas upon which I have painted a thousand versions of myself - versions I'd hardly recognize now, versions I wish I could get back.

My body is evidence in the crime of my life that proves

definitively

I did not sit back.

I was not a passive observer.

My body is a vessel, which is to say

it is nothing / it is everything.

"Your body is a temple."

Don't tell me about my body.

I've seen my reflection.

It doesn't tell half the story.

III.

At work, Bobby the Regular always sits at the bar

and greets me with, "You look gorgeous."

He looks me dead in the eye with such grave importance,

like the revelation might save my life,

or like he's the first man to ever wanna fuck me.

I know he thinks he's doing me a favor,

but

I've never felt less confident

than when a strange man

tells me I'm beautiful.

IV.

The first time my daughter comes crying to me that she hates her body,

I will not tell her she is wrong.

Instead, I will look her in the eye and say,

"Your lungs fill up with air involuntarily

& your heart beats 80 times per minute

& when you fall off of your bike and skin your knee, you cry because it hurts

& your body is not a temple.

You don't have to worship at its altar."

I will tell her all the things I should have told myself.