Jump from forty-five pounds
to sixty pounds in the third grade
and your dad will make a joke
about how someone's been taking
an extra helping at dinner

When you go visit your grandparents
your parents will judge
your cousins and call them obese
When you go to sleep at night,
listen to your parents using
fat and unlovable interchangeably
Instead of bedtime story lessons
you'll learn you must be
skinny
pretty
and smart to be loved

When you mess up and
make your parents angry,
get sent to bed without dinner
If it's especially bad
no lunch and no dinner
Skipping meals will become second nature,
and you'll only eat
when you know you deserve it
You'll only eat when you know you're lovable.

When you hit
seventy pounds in the fourth grade,
vow not to go above it
Fat on your body is a death wish
for an already unlovable child
When you hit eighty
the summer before fifth grade,
start stepping on the scale like it'll fix it.

When you jump from 80 pounds
to 60 in the fifth grade
and no one says a word,
feel like you fit in your skin again,
even if your stomach never stops hurting.
You'll get used to it;
the hunger feels more natural than being full.

Stop eating breakfast at school,
(no one ever asks why)
never go through the lunch line
(the teachers assume you packed a lunch)
and don't eat dinner at home
(your mom assumes you had a big lunch)
Water is miracle juice
that fills your stomach when the pain
gets to be too much
and when you splurge,
feel like nothing will ever make up for it.

In middle school, go days without eating
(your friends will still call you a hog,
say you eat like a pig.
your girlfriend will still pinch the skin
on your stomach as an explanation
for breaking up with you.)

When quarantine comes,
stop eating almost entirely.
There's no one left to make sure your weight
doesn't drop back down to 60
and why shouldn't you?
Maybe this time you'll be lovable.

In eighth grade,
when you're too big for your bones,
you'll gain thirty pounds in the first
two months of school
your weight will skyrocket from
60 to 90, and you cant lose it again,
no matter how hard you try.

Your freshman year of high school,
finally start puberty and gain
ten pounds in fat distribution.
Your doctor will say it's normal,
but God knows normal isn't good enough,
and maybe if you cut the weight off
you'll be good enough for your parents to love. You bind your chest and you
skip a week of meals in a row.
Hungry isn't a word anymore, it's just
normal. You won't remember
what it feels like to be full,
but you won't remember
what it feels like for your parents to love you either, so deal with it for a little bit longer.

The next summer,
a boy will you he loves you.
He'll fill your mind with pretty little words
and ask you to make sure you eat,
but when school starts next year,
he won't hold your hand in front of anyone
and he'll stop calling you at night.
When he leaves you for a girl
with a smaller number
when she steps on the scale,
rip your body apart shred by shred
to figure out how to make it
something someone else could love,
relapse into hunger like it's your best friend. Hunger is the fullest feeling you've ever felt
and it masks the loneliness so well
you forget you started to be more loveable,
because sure at the start this was about being
beautiful, but now it's about destruction.
Starve yourself before
someone else can take it away from you.
It's a bitter sort of control,
but it's the only kind you have.

In October, start talking to this guy
who'll say you've got it all wrong
you're scared because you've done this before,
and you weren't good enough,
but when it's January and he's still here
you start to feel loveable enough
to eat your dinner.