so the seventh

day 7: name a thing you love about your body and personality

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     My initial response to naming one thing I love about my body is to outsource the answer. Should I text my boyfriend, friends, and countrymen to poll their perspective of me? Tell me you don't trust yourself without telling me you don't trust yourself. My mans would say something perverted like my ass, which would never be my first choice. 

     My go-to is my eyes. There are so many magical ways to describe blue/green/hazel eyes but I'm still searching for the words for brown. When Tyler the Creator sang, "It's them rose-tinted cheeks, yeah, it's them dirt-colored eyes," I was like: okay, now we're getting somewhere! There's that joke about having brown eyes due to being full of shit, which is stupid. Besides being compared to chocolate (so two thousand & late), they're reminiscent of mud, tree bark, coffee, caramel... either food or earth related.

     When I was a sophomore in high school, I was a part of this Little Buddy program where I'd hang out with a second grader from time to time and get her little gifts. She made me a drawing I've kept all these years that really means a lot to me.

     My eyes are so dark they reflect the light, illuminating like the flash of a camera. I felt so seen when my girl gave me this art piece. I find them warm & hypnotic & alluring. They say the eyes are among the first things you notice about someone upon meeting. Mine would say I have a hundred stories and a thousand secrets behind them.

     To accompany these deep-honey orbs (still food), I'd say I love my sense of humor or intellect. I remember in elementary school I was obsessed with reading biographies. I'm talkin' sitting on the library floor in third grade just gettin' down on Harriet Tubman unprovoked. Frederick Douglass. Sojourner Truth. George Washington Carver. Booker T Washington. My mom and grandma enjoyed reading and they cultivated an environment that made it very apparent how important education is. My angel James Baldwin said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

     Similarly, my mom and her siblings have always been goofy. They didn't mind sarcasm or jokes being told or playing pranks. There was a lot of chaos in my life growing up, but my maternal family still found ways to laugh and exercise their wit. This has been an integral part of who I am and what I'm about. By the time I got to middle school, I fell in love with stand-up comedy. Dane Cook was the first comedian who captured my heart. My best friends and I would listen to bits by '07 Kevin Hart, Demetri Martin, Amy Schumer, and Nick Swardson on our bus rides to junior high volleyball games. My senior year of high school is when what we know as memes became really popular. Combining my technological savviness with my humor, I became fucking unstoppable. Lexa, play "Gift & A Curse" by Megan Thee Stallion.