Last night I dreamt.
I was in a place that was unfamiliar. A bed that I did not know as my own. I felt his hand on my shoulder, pulling me towards him as I lay with my back to him.
"No", I said.
"I hate my belly".
"You hate your belly?
But why? Let me see."
"No really, I hate it. It has a little bulge in the front.
Please. I don't want you to look at it."
"Come now, roll over here.
I want to see this awful bulge that you hate so much."
And so I rolled over on my back. Breath held, waiting for his response.
"It looks like a perfect belly to me."
"It isn't. I hate it."
"It is perfect. Just do this.
Close your eyes."
And so I lay with my eyes closed to the moonlight coming through the parted curtains, and he laid his hands on my belly. Slowly moving them up, then back down.
"Do you feel that? Do you feel how perfect your belly is?"
Then rubbing, caressing me.
"Do you feel that? Do you know that when my hands are on you every part that I touch becomes perfect? It does. When my hand meets your skin we, together, make perfection.
When my hand is empty of you I feel it. I feel that absence and I feel at a loss, as though I have no connection to anything that is real. And I know that I am your perfection. Without my hand you are unfinished. Incomplete. And therefore imperfect in your own eyes."
"Now come, let me perfect you."
And I felt those hands all over my body, fingers pulling and kneading my skin, and in every place that was touched I became whole. I became a perfect woman under his hand.
I awoke to the nights chill. And I lay under the sheets, touching myself in the same way that he had. And, still feeling his hands upon me, every place still warm and alive from his fingers, I pushed myself to that place of perfection that he could not.
And then, after the sensation was gone,
I lay with my head upon the pillow and I knew.
I am incomplete.
And I hate my belly.
