You don’t exist for me. You are not a thing. You are a person. A fully complex person with wants and desires and needs and boundaries.

Even within the context of acknowledging that you are a person I want to say that you are beautiful. Beauty is a subjective thing. We each define it differently. When I say you are beautiful what I mean is when I look at you I feel yearning.

I wish to smell your skin.

I wish I was permitted to smell your hair. But you are a person and not a flower so I keep my distance.

You are wonderful.

When I say wonderful I mean that I wonder about you. I think about you. I wonder what makes you smile and what makes you frown. Both are equally important because your joy and your repulsion are equally important.

You are important. You are important because you offer viewpoints that no one else can offer. Your opinion matters because it is utterly unique. Even if you agree with your sister or your tia or your mei mei you are different. You are you.

You are beautiful. You are beautiful for your imperfections as much as for your glow. You bemoan your acne and I say that your pores are alive with a need to reach for the air.

You burst with being alive. How can I see that as anything other than glorious. The essence of you wants to meet the world. Sometimes it crusts over because life is really fucking inconvenient.

You are still magnificent.

You may believe that having uneven eyes or uneven lips or a hitch in your gait means you are less than.

I weep at your glory.

You may say, “But I’m faaaaat“. Smile when you use that word. The smile should drip with invitation and allure. Yes. You are fat. Gloriously fat. Delightfully fat. Worshipfully fat.

Oh how I fall before your munificent body. You are a gift to the world. Thank you.

I see the curves of your breasts and I want to pillow my head on them. I want to gently touch them and give them all of the gentleness the world usually shuns.

I want to caress and kiss you and tell you I love you.

Not because you do anything for me. You don’t. You are a stranger. Because you exist and you make me want to be a better person. You make me wish I could deserve the glory of your attention, if even for a moment.

Sometimes when I look at you I wonder if your skin holds as much promise of warmth as it looks like. I won’t find out, because that would cross a boundary. But I wonder.

I am glad you are in this world. I get to wonder about you. You get to have a whole life. That seems like a good balance.