My earliest, happiest memories are from summers spent at a lakeside cabin in central Wisconsin. My sister and I would waste away the days picking rocks and shells, drinking Tab from bright pink cans, and vying for the Coppertone towel we both loved. After lunch, we’d strategically align ourselves to face the sun, flipping over every half hour to make sure we were evenly bronzed.
We’d complain about the heat, but we’d stay outside on that pier until the sun went down and we were scared away by the bats skimming out across the water.
As a teenager, I had my first (and only) experience of topless sun-bathing. I picked an afternoon when no one else was home, I found a spot behind the garage where no one could see me, and I dared to bare it all. The whole adventure lasted probably twenty minutes – but I still remember how freeing it felt to be totally exposed to the sun’s gaze.
I still love that feeling of the sun heating my skin, making me blush. It’s amazing how something so far away touches me and changes me.
Perhaps that’s why I adore The Sun Lover by Julia Kasdorf:
The long afternoon after church
a girl lies on the lawn,
glazed thighs slightly parted,
fingers splayed like petals. At sixteen
she is a virgin. While her parents nap
in the quiet house, she knows
the sun is teaching her about love,
how it comes over your body
making every muscle go soft
in its pitiless gaze,
how it penetrates everything,
changing you into something dark
and radiant. She craves it,
knows it is everywhere like God’s love,
but difficult to find. She waits,
entirely still, trying to see her eyelids–
not lingering traces, but the lids themselves
luminous and red as the cheeks of the kid
who stuck a flashlight in his mouth at camp.
She squints so the tips of her lashes
flash like iridescent fish scales.
Every hour, she turns over but prefers
to face the sun. All her life
she’ll measure loves against this
gentle ravishing. She’ll spend afternoons
alone on crowded beaches, and at home
stand naked before mirrors, amazed
by the pale shape of her suit. She’ll touch
her cheekbones’ tingling pink, and nip
at her lover’s shoulders, as if
it were earth she were after.
