• I will stand before God a disappointment. I will wear baggy clothing and I will speak poor English with a southern twang I repressed while I was living, with dirty hands I had always kept washed, now covered in dust, I will extend my palms to God and I will tell her my name. I will show her the gritty sandpaper feeling of life, I will run her hands along my filthy skin until she is filthy too and she will understand when I ask her to allow me to return but in a new skin, a new body for this old soul because, you see, I've fallen in love. And I will tell her as much and she will not be confused. She will not mistake my words for feelings of lust or insecurity but she will know that I have fallen in love with is the feeling of being human. The grass between my toes, the sand through my fingers, I have fallen in love with imperfection, with bumpy skin and awkward noses and too big hands and feet, with the waking each morning and the dropping into sleep at night. I will tell her I'm addicted to the feeling of my own chest rising, my own heart thumping beneath thick, fatty skin and strong sturdy ribs, I have fallen in love with being breakable because even the strongest humans break and crumble and decay ever so slowly. I will tell her that I've fallen in love with hope, childlike hope in the worst of times and dreams, I even dream when I cannot sleep and that infectous human spirit, all those circles we travel in, the redundancy of humanity, I will tell her that I'm hooked in the worst way, I'm in love in the deepest purest sense and she will nod. She understands. And she will let me turn back and she will give me a new skin because she understands that I'm in love with being in love, I'm in love with being human and being woman and I could never love being Godly, being perfect. When I stand before God it will be brief and it will pale in comparison to the feeling of new, smooth skin and a new bone structure a new breakability and I will not look back. Because God will understand. And she will love me anyway