If and Only If: A Journal of Body Image and Eating Disorders Winter 2015 | Page 63

My Body

Ben Gross

My body is a temple

But no Roman nor Babylonian

Could desecrate it more than I do.

I am sculpted like Ionian marble

And the light and shadow dance

Around my muscles in sacred motion

That makes my reflected form radiate

An enviable, swollen perfection.

But I sack this temple,

Profane this shrine

With the very thing that gives me life.

If only I were truly marble

Or bronze

And could live forever in static consummation.

But I must age and I must eat.

I feel fat congeal around my calcified bones

And death creep along my spine.

The first conspiring with the second,

Till my worn and bloated body

Finds the fate of every once immaculate temple:

A heap of forgotten, despised rubble

And food for the worms

Who eat with a joyful, reckless abandon.