A Glance At Myself

I'm fighting a battle beyond this. I'm fighting a war that she knows, that she is aware of, but she is not focused on the greater war.

She sees the trees.

I only see the end of the forest.

And so she implores me to look at my feet.

"This body," she goes on, "It's yours now. She is you and you are her and the two of you, together, are together. You are one.

"But the fact remains that you were not always her and so you have the ability to see things from a unique perspective. One that so few people have a chance to see. One that so few people have a chance to truly understand."

"What does this have to do with-" I start, but she cuts me off by still talking.

"You see we lose perspective. Too much time looking at the world from one point of view and too much time focusing on what is coming down the path. We forget to see-"

"The forest for the trees," I finish for her, rolling my eyes.

"No," she smiles thinly, "We forget to see our eyes themselves."

My mouth opens to speak, my mind already formulating the exact words to use to point out to her that you can't see your own eyeballs, when her hand waves and it all flashes through me all at once. It's suddenly, like a slap of cold water that takes my breath away and leaves me shocked and then it's gone an instant later. It just kind of hits me and washes over me and then pulls back on the other side and I'm...

Not me. I'm someone again but it isn't me and yet it is. I'm her again, I'm Emily.

But I was just me. The other me. The me that I used to be.

"Perspective is about more than just what angle you are seeing from. It's about how you see and it's about how you feel when you're seeing it as well. Perspective is about all the things that come with it. Perspective is about..."

"Pain," I finish for her, because pain was what I felt in that moment. The pain of who I used to be.

The pain that was constant, even if I didn't ever register it.

Physically, not spiritually or mentally though those pains were there as well but in the immediacy what I felt was a pain like a dull ache. Like a blunted knife jabbing into me and radiating out through me.

But it wasn't in one single spot. It was everywhere. It was in every joint and in every muscle. It was just rust and wear and tear. It was creakiness in my bones and an ache in my belly and an exhaustion that I never seemed to get out from. Chains bound around my body that I carried with each step and added to with each day.

"Age," she explains, "is an old and inevitable bitch."

I breathe out long and slow and I shake my head and with it shake off everything but the memory of that pain, that ache. That dullness that I'd never really realized was building up, never really witnessed it coming on to me until I realized that it had been there far too long.

"Perspective of youth," I nod, "I get it."

"Part of it," she smiles, correcting me, "You get part of it. Not all, though, you're not quite ready for that yet."

"But that's what I'm missing," I insist, "I'm focused on chasing pleasure and I'm missing the pleasure of just existing."

"Precisely," she claps her hands together, smiling broadly and pleased that I'm finally starting to get it, "The pleasure of being and the pleasure of a thousand little moments that help you be. That let you be. The pleasure of being in a body that has youth and a second chance and more than that, the pleasure of this body."

Baba Yaga gestures to my body and I stare down at it. The soft swells of my breasts and the flat tautness of my belly. My curved thighs and the fullness of my hips. The flexibility and more than just that the brimming energy, the way I could feel with every inch of myself and even the way I breathed, easy and free and with my body responding so well to every moment.

It is that subtle movement that I remember more than anything. It is, simply, the joy of being her. It is the pleasure of movement and having her respond.

It is the way she feels like more than a second skin.

It is the way that she feels more alive than I ever have before as him.

And it's her, the subtle softness of her femininity. It is the pleasure of being in this soft but flexible body that makes me realize what it is that I need and I want and I love.

"I'm a woman," I say, and the Baba Yaga nods.

"You are," she agrees, "So maybe start loving all the moments of being her."

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