Enough

by Tricia McCallum

A barbecue and swim after work had brought us together
around the campfire that summer evening,
An impromptu thing teenagers do best:
You bring the beer. I’ll bring the chips.

I watched her run up from the water laughing.
As I write this her name comes back to me: Yvonne.
Fresh from her swim she stood close to the fire
in her tiny yellow bikini
drying her waist-length sheet of onyx-colored hair with a towel.

She seemed so utterly assured of herself in the task at hand,
so composed for a young girl,
tossing her head languidly from side to side
then taking a large hounds tooth comb and slowly pulling it through
that glorious hair of hers.

She must have known we all followed her every move,
couldn’t help but know it by the silence
that had enveloped her ritual,
the flames casting an unreal glow on that hair,
that perfect form and face.

The men particularly stared in awe
at this goddess from Okinawa who’d ended up
in our backwater of all places,
in their midst.

I watched the men’s faces watching her
that night,
knowing even at 16 I would never possess the audacity
that was Miss Yvonne Tsubone’s that night,
and for as long as it lasted,
that which comes from sheer and absolute physical beauty,
a calling card that says,
without words:
I am perfect just as I am:
what I am is
enough.

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Tricia McCallum, a Glasgow-born Canadian, is an award-winning writer and poet and prolific Huffington Post Blogger. She is the author of two books of poetry: The Music of Leaving published in September 2014 by Toronto’s Demeter Press, and Nothing Gold Can Stay: A Mother and Father Remembered (2011)