the not-so-radical act of self-love

They say you can't love anyone if you don't love yourself.
I stared long and hard into the mirror's surface
and eventually I started to accept the flaws I never
thought of as lovable before I had learned to stand
on my own two feet, even if I could only stand for an hour.
I found myself in a field lit only by stars,

found the single one I would call my star,
found my star every time I couldn't love myself,
coming back night after night to the field that was ours.
I walked by the water and saw myself below the surface,
walked on the ice to make a stand
against this frozen side of me that could never

thaw enough to feel the warmth of flame, never
find the spot of sky that holds my star,
never reach out far enough to take his hand.
If I wanted him, first I had to love myself,
so I pulled my frozen side through the surface
of the ice, held her in my arms for hours,

told her my history, hers, ours,
and slowly melted the ice that had bound her forever.
It felt like holding my breath under the surface
of the shining sea of light, witnessed by my star,
becoming one with this newly loved part of myself,
feeling the chill as my hand touched her hand

and overlapped, as we united, and
it took a year, or maybe an hour,
but at the end I loved my entire self
with a frantic single-mindedness I never
should have turned upon another, but like my star,
he'd been my constant reminder of why I had to look beyond the surface

of my teary eyes, delve beneath the surface
of my shallow thoughts. He was why I loved myself,
and how should I not have loved my lucky star?
I brought him to the dark field I considered ours
and showed him where I'd looked for comfort, ever
finding his brightness to turn me back to myself.

He never had trouble seeing past my surface,
but never saw me as a shining star,
and never told me how he saw himself, for all we talked for hours.