Look

The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

At nineteen, I was a hard girl. Broken down into fragments...not eating for days and days at a time, running my fingers over my switchblade hipbones and counting the bars of my ribcage in the mirror reflection with my eyes. I filled my body with whatever pretty little poisons I could on any given night, then awoke every morning and took a handful of prescription pain pills for breakfast. I had my first tattoo added to my belly to prove to myself that I'd left my old life behind...transformed, then got my navel pierced one rainy Saturday afternoon by a guy who told me I'd probably come on the table when he pressed the needle through my flesh, "I see it every day." He told me. I watched intently as he threaded needle then ring through, but felt only lightheaded, much to his apparent disappointment. This was one life I walked through...one which may or may not have been my own.

At twenty, that black-hearted girl was pregnant all of a sudden. Terrified...stopping all the chemicals and alcohol immediately, watching in numb shock as my bones yielded to rounded, maternal curves. As my belly grew, the piercing became painful, my tough hide suddenly gone tender until it had to be taken out. I was having a baby...I was getting healthy on clean and quiet living. I felt thankful to leave that shadow-girl I was behind. I ran headlong into the next life as if my hair was aflame. I wanted security and permanence and roots, not wings.

Yesterday, I went to get my navel re-pierced. It wasn't about "feeling 19 again" or trying to capture something lost. My navel is oddly shaped now, thanks to a combination of pregnancies and a thick scar from the original piercing. I feel self-conscious of it, running my fingers over it protectively and not wearing bikinis in the summer. After ten minutes of talking about pick-up lines and "scamming on chicks" with the guys in the studio, I followed the body piercer back to the narrow room and he smiled and said, "Go ahead and take off your shirt if you want."

"Umm...I'm getting my belly done." I pointed out.

"I know," he laughed, "I was just sayin...if you want to."

"No thanks, I'm tryin to cut back on that stripper stuff." I said, feeling my face go red.

"Navel, huh?"

"I'm trying to but I had it before so I don't know..."

"Okay, lemme see," he said and then it was the moment, one I dread, one I hate--I pulled my top up just enough to show the sliver of pale belly and the original piercing site.

He put on rubber gloves and ran his fingers over my skin, looking intently and smoothing the scar between two fingers. Then he looked up at me,

"I gotta be honest...it's not gonna work."

"What? Why not?"

"The old scar is too deep..."

The old scar is too deep echoed through me...we talked for another ten minutes about hows and whys and he offered to pierce anything else I wanted.

"No, I wanted that to hide how deformed looking my belly button is," I said.

He laughed so hard he had to sit down on a stool, "You're not serious."

"Yes I am. I'm self-conscious of it and wanted to hide it with a re-piercing."

"I want you to come back to the shop on Tuesday and spend the day with me. I've been doin this for twenty years and if you saw the chicks that come in and out of here for just a few hours you'd walk out of here feeling like the shit. Believe me."

I declined the offer, though he pressed the point, and walked out of the shop with my navel still bare, still scarred as it is. I went home and looked at it again in the mirror and though I truly don't like it, I realize it's a sign of transformation nonetheless.

I am not that 19 year old anymore, though her darkness remains embedded in my history...a chapter already written out. I am not that 20 year old either, though her heady craving for security is an impulse I understand. I have this body, this life and I'm accepting it as it all as it is right in this moment. The old scars are too deep, but I have perspective now. Like Kunitz, in his poem I am noticing that: The next chapter of my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.