I leave myself enough room in my clothes so I can wax and wane depending on the days
I put my finger in my throat to gauge how full I am
too much, I shrink for a few days, fill myself up again when I begin to run on fumes
sometimes I forget to feed my cat and I think
"I wish someone forgot to feed me"
sometimes I let my eyes glaze over as I eat another bag of chips
and another
the scale tells me how much I’m worth
a good day I am .2 lbs happier than a bad day
It’s all the same
my body hasn’t changed since the day puberty hit me like an arrow through the heart
I was gifted two bouncing breasts and doughy sides from mother earth
thank you thank you just what I wanted
I always wanted to be soft so a man could learn to love me
ow even when I cut it doesn’t stop growing
these things plastered under the sensitive skin of my chest
are foreign objects invading my personal space
I never know what to do
I eat one less chip in hopes they will shrink away without nourishment
the thought of a child nuzzling into me here is appalling
I want to be a child not a woman women smell odd
and leak odd things and act in odd ways
mysterious ways in which I was never fond
flaunting flirting fawning frowning
intricacies of emotion and speech and daintiness of gesture
I was the little girl scraping here knees while trying to dig holes to the other side of the world
now I have to be fragile?
I was fragile once when I fractured two bones in my arm
I didn’t cry but I screamed when they put them in place
it was then that I considered myself porcelain
like the dolls far up on the shelves in my childhood bedroom
leering down from above with glossy, glassy perfect eyes
did I dream of being them?
hair too wavy, frizzy, flat
clothes too plain, stomach too puffy
I trimmed out all of the crinkles that made me a mess
I wanted to see the world through eyes that never blinked
I forgot I was a human girl -female- along the way
bones make good harps but hurt if you sit in hard places
bones make good road maps to the grave
bones make good hiding places when you want to slip out of consciousness
I count them to give my brain something to do
temporary escape
I cut off all of my hair once and felt nothing
but lightness where there was once burden
this pleased me but never worked again
behind this new hair I was still the same old person
I had tried to escape all of these years
same bones, skin, hair
same brain
same set of genetic and environmental factors combining to make the same -unique- individual
same me
same girl who would never be a porcelain doll painted with the most perfect and graceful of features
I smashed them all one day and cried like it was my own funeral
the shards fell to the ground in a beautiful mess of perfectly shattered features
a conglomerate of impossible aspirations that was still more beautiful than I would ever be