"My back is all bumpy," she says shyly. "I have black heads and acne scars."
I think she's beautiful. I tell her.
She shrugs. Grins at me with her quirky, crooked smile. I smile back.
Long pause.
Are we gonna do this?
"Sorry," she says finally. "I'm just really self-conscious. My breasts hang like four inches lower than they did when I was in my twenties. They have stretch marks. They look like udders."
She giggles.
She sounds like a little girl.
She doesn't sound like she's forty.
She doesn't look like she's forty.
I giggle back.
I don't see the stretch marks she's talking about.
"We can edit them out," I say anyway.
"My feet are so fucking HUGE," she whines when I show her the raw image. "And my face looks like it's melting in on itself."
She squishes her face into a quadruple chin and laughs like Jabba the Hutt.
I can't win with her.
"At least you have a sense of humor about it," I say finally.
She slaps my arm playfully.
Falls back onto the couch in a huff.
God she's beautiful.
Why doesn't she know this?
"We can edit stuff," I reassure her again from behind the camera. "We can edit everything."
"Even my belly?"
"Even your belly."
This is my entry to the #monomad challenge, held daily in the Black and White Community.