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Once you’ve been one, you never aren’t. “Chubette,” is a bullet that shatters a day of shopping. It is true, isn’t it, that once you’ve seen your self fat in 3 way mirrors, or photographs, cringed when someone yells “Fatso,” you see that image at 120 pounds, at 90. I stood at the edge of the scale so gingerly, I bruised my instep. In ballet, if someone is losing weight, they wear a yellow leotard or pale lavender but switch back to black when they’ve gained a few pounds. “Zaftig” only sounds nice but isn’t. I will never believe anyone truly loves dragging enough fat to make a separate person around with them. Say “fat is beautiful,” call them “plus sizes.” Well thought I know it’s not pc, I think it’s a lie. Still, I think I shouldn’t be writing this poem, that it could annoy or hurt somebody, someone who has tried to leave what they don’t need to drag around, what damages their heart. When you’re surrounded by ballet babies, spider legs and arms, anorexics, bulimics, what isn’t there seems to matter more than what is. I think of my sister, once the skinny beauty, who needed eggnogs to give her strength, until, wounded maybe, she built a wall of flesh around her you can’t get through. Don’t you think you’ve been touched by all this? I think of the year I chewed gum to not eat, got lots of cavities. Listen, I know this poem is in trouble, in as much trouble as I will be if I finish it, publish, or worse, read it. Once when I read a poem called “Fat” at a woman’s center, some walked out and the ones who didn’t were angry. But like the Shakers who wanted everything stripped to the barest essentials, like an aunt emptying her house of what she didn’t need, I know there’s a lot I could get rid of. Here I’m talking about pounds but if you took a look at my closets you’d see they are stuffed with what I should shed, 5 inch heeled boots, Betsey Johnson skirts, so much black velvet you could imagine yourself under an enormous midnight sky, lost in the dark with no light or exit.
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