Where were you?

I learned, later, with disapproval,
that the fleeting nature of beauty
is not a reason to turn away from it.
Quite the opposite.
It is because beauty fades
that we must look at it,
see it while it still lives in us,
cherish it before it slips away.
Love ourselves at every age.
Sometimes for our shapes.
Sometimes for our light.
Sometimes for what we radiate.
Sometimes for what our bodies carry,
what they survive.

She used to tell me:
“Beauty is fleeting.”
And now I tell myself:
“Beauty is what it is.”

And if I must choose
between the ignorance of what I might have savored
and the soft betrayal of an inheritance born of fear,
then I choose to learn how to see.Because maybe if I train my eyes to love,
my heart will know how to remember
even when the body has spent its time,
when the color has faded,
and the skin bears the lines
of years crossed
with or without grace,
but always with trace.