It’s hard for me to say that I find my body worthy
Of fitting in a crowd where I can show it off.
I find it weird to leave my stomach uncovered
Because that’s all I’ll be thinking about when talking to someone
Or riding my shorts too high when I meet your eyes.
You see, losing a few pounds didn’t make loose my insecurities
That aunties and uncles had built as they saw my bulging flesh
Before they heard me speak
And thought they had all the right to tell me
How they really feel because we’re children anyway.
How can we be insecure? How can we take it to heart?
Aunty, remember how you sat me on your lap
To tease your friends around by telling them
That your daily workout was done?
Uncle, you remember you offered that chocolate to my sister
And not me because I didn’t “look hungry”?
Every guest would tell me to go work out
While those girls would whisper during pe
As if I was slacking off.
I was told that it was “so humiliating”
For you
To ask a shopkeeper for a thirteen-year old’s size for a
Six-year-old body and I ducked my head in shame
For a skin I didn’t ask.
I tucked my hands underneath this belly in pictures
And you pulled them down.
“It looks…”, your forehead creased as if a sin, “bad.”
I didn’t loose the flesh you pointed at, rather shamelessly
Cause your comments made me trace my spread out thighs
With my nails
And mark a line between the width that was okay
And the extra that wasn’t
Just hoping to myself that it would go away.
I didn’t hold my stomach in vain hoping it would shrink
Or pull the fat in my cheeks down
For a jawline I was begged for.
It happened cause all my biscuits were taken away,
And the exercise you’d so greedily asked for was done
And so much love was stripped
That all that remained was the bare of my bones
Until that scratched line thinned
And when I thought I was finally enough,
I came running back to you
To hear you say,
“No, you look too thin,
do you not eat?
No, you’re too weak,
You shouldn’t go to the gym.
No, you’re too skinny,
You need some weight in you.
Now, I lie too old for those biscuits
as I Hide and Seek my weight,
as I inhaled my stomach in photos before
and smiled artificially in ones now.
Where’s your point?
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