Jim Jam

By Manjari Sharma in Poetry
| 2 min read | 329 വായിക്കുന്നു | ഇഷ്ടപ്പെടുന്നു: 0| Report this story

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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