I look best in the dim light
Face angles softened in waning contrast
Hair only seen where it should be
My body's silhouette, believable
corseted by the blur
I look best in the darkness,
actually
When it's easiest to use me as a repository for twisted fantasy
The darkness,
where the infinite is unfolded
and everything is possible
even my beauty
as long as you crave it
I look best in the dim light,
I know
I look best in the darkness,
I know
But truly, I look best
in the flickering blue belly
of a flame
Because darkness can shade you from everyone
But the fire of good love,
can shade you from everyone else
And though it feels like fire
your gaze is more of a chisel
like water to stone
running across the cliffside of my frame
carving a woman out of all this
And over time, I let myself believe
that I am what you see
I feel the flower patches you planted on my waistline start to root into my hip bone
My skin gooses from the rush of the river you traced up from my knees to my chest
I'm left breathless by the ribbon you weave between the cats-cradle of my rib cage
You teach me what it is to be beautiful,
by knowing that I'm already beautiful
And there's nothing else
There's no light, there's no dark
There's just flame
And the way it clears the dim ache of the abyss that surrounded me before you looked my way
The truth is
there's nothing I can do
to ever earn the way
that the tide of your searching gaze
laps at the shore of my languid body
The truth is I'm in the center of a spotlit stage
when I stand in your line-of-sight
The truth is
I look best
in the blue-bellied fire of your love
or, even more simply
I look best
when you're looking
at me