Belly

I was young when it started,

crying at football tryouts

because I couldn’t run the laps,

couldn’t keep up with the boys,

coach telling my parents and I

that I needed to lose seventeen pounds

in two weeks to make the team, then

telling them in private it was really

twenty-seven, which they told me later,

which I still hear, the age I am now.

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A picture of me from elementary school,

standing in the hallway outside my classroom,

stomach stretching the fabric of my shirt.

I remember thinking it looked like

I swallowed a bowling ball, a globe.

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What age was I when I started lifting

my shirt every time I passed a mirror,

wondering what I looked like from

this angle, that angle, always the words

fat fag in my head even skipping meals?

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Stepping on the scale to decide

what I could eat that day.

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My sister and I exercising together

one morning, some Beachbody video,

when she collapsed to the ground

and I ran for my mom and my sister

couldn’t breathe and I was already

part of that lineage.

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Cold water on an empty stomach.

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At senior prom with an upperclassman,

his best friend whispering in my ear,

he paid a lot for that food on your plate

so you better fucking eat, fork and

knife shaking in my hands.

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A high school boyfriend’s hands on my bare stomach,

him saying buddha belly, then him cheating on me, which

I cared too much about at the time. I just wanted to be

enough, which was of course not something he could give me.

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Starting the diet again every morning,

starting the starving, until the inevitable

binge, another reason to punish myself.

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Years of this.

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Stopped caring as much after the fire,

eating freely and without shame, until

I noticed my stomach fold over my waist.

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Every time I passed a mirror,

fingering the folds.

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The bloom of a new stretchmark.

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Skipping meals like coming home.

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The child said come on big fatty

and I tried to hold them back but

the old thoughts rushed in, that

I’d been right all along, as if

the thoughts were ever mine.

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Not lifting my shirt every time

I pass a reflective surface.

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Stretching into someone,

something, else.

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Daily affirmations:

I love my belly.

I love my body.

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I love how, when I’m driving,

I can rest my water bottle

on my belly like a shelf.

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I have never been more hydrated.