Lauren Hobday is an emerging feminist and children’s writer from Wurundjeri country. With a passion for contemporary writing, Lauren focuses on exploring themes of the body and the feminine through a personal and societal lens. She is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing) with RMIT University, and her writing/visual work can be found via her Instagram @_wutheringwrites.
*****
My bare chest grazes between faux silk sheets and clutched knees. Rocking gently; a distraction from the imposter syndrome I feel in a body I own but cannot understand yet. I’ve never sat like this before.
It’s baby skin that I am wrapped in, trying desperately to shed. Nervously fumbling with the edges as if it were an easy peel cling film packaging. Finding spots that didn’t exist before and still filling out the empty space of my rib cage like it’s my first school uniform. Tenderly saying,
‘You’ll grow into it.’
With limbs like lines intertwined and numb from the waist down, my baby skin is an accidental landscape of beige, blue, blush, and violet bleeding together like watercolour. The most exquisite yet controversial art that I cannot afford, but hopelessly save my rainy-day pennies for.
I want to touch it, but cover it, and laugh at it, but also cry at it. It is so new, but I want it to be worn, that’s how I’ll know it’s reliable. This baby skin is unexplored, and these hands are pioneers, trespassing this sweet urge to find what is untouched. But dare I tell anyone of my adventures in innocence when I seek so much to be experienced. I am fraudulent and I must cover over this soft, milky, bare baby skin in case it betrays me.
***
I am a size twelve, ten and eight, depending on where you measure and what time it is, but the pattern doesn’t have room for alterations beyond the label. I drape the loose sheet over my exposed skin, watching as the fabric waterfalls over dips and folds. A gentle stroke along a soft curve. Material that wants to cherish, not shame into length, height, and width.
Bodies like mine are posed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This is saintly skin stained with tiny sins like ink blot. I rest my healing hand upon my skin and let its life-giving powers flow into every cell of my body. Cleansing and purifying my soul. Regenerating my spirit. I use the knees I once covered my body with and get on them to pray. Watch as my palms kiss in their holy touch,
‘Amen’
I’ve touched all these places. I’ve been touched in all these places. This is the map of my pilgrimage, marked in stretches, dimples, and wrinkles. I follow them with a lazy finger and no final destination. The faded ones I cannot remember how they got there or when. Bruises and scars - sometimes both in the same place – are like time stamped reminders that my baby skin has long fallen away and revealed only scar tissue underneath.