I never wanted to be fat.
It’s just that no one asked me to have these genes.
It seems my fat ass is hereditary.
I never wanted to be fat.
It just so happens that
I’ve never been a small girl.
A very round peg in an itsy bitsy square kinda world.
I mean, come on, who wants to be fat these days?
You get winded going up every damn flight of steps in the Patterson Office Tower
cause your math class is on the third floor.
Mmmhmm, you know---Can’t buy pretty, feminine bras!
You know the the ones I mean, The kind with that push-up capability but your fat ass
can’t wear them cause your voluptuous cup runneth over
I never wanted to be fat.
It’s just that no one ever wanted to know my name. Shame.
And I always laughed at myself because being a woman meant frowning and sulking was bad for my health.
So, I came up with nice, cute little jokes and comments
seething with sarcasm about how I wanted
to stay the way that I was
and change is bad and I wouldn’t look right skinny anyway. There’s no way.
I never wanted to be fat.
It’s just that when I looked at myself in the mirror I wanted deny everything about me to me.
I was lying to me.
Dying to me.
Lying.
Telling myself it was ok to be ashamed. Shame.
Ok to blame my genes. Shame. Ok to blame. Ok to blame.
Ok to blame society because
being the same size as Halle would’ve won me a distinctive slot in the “For skinny girls only” Rally.
Ok to assume that black women aren’t sick.
Although, we burn a piece of ourselves everyday
from conforming to life
performing through life
and deforming our lives
to become lighter eyed,
trimmer thighed,
hair fried,
dyed laid to the side.
Because I never wanted to be fat
but it’s just that it was so comfortable being a size 16 or 14 or any size in the teens.
Alarming to change all that I was because
I was supposed to be confident and a strong woman
and full of tried and true beliefs, give other people relief, be a mother to my sister or my brother.
But nobody asked me what I wanted
just assumed by me being fat, that THAT fat formed a malicious evil circle around my heart.
Desensitizing any feelings that I’ve ever had
because someone wanted to be nice and call me “healthy”.
Just assumed by me being fat, I lacked the power
of being a true human being because
I had a problem with eating.
Bleeding with gluttony because having love handles
was not a part of anyone’s democracy.
So since everyone wanted to pet and enable the fat
I decided that I did not want to be fat!
“Oh she never was fat I never thought that!”
In a SNAP, I decided to ZAP all this emotionally heavy, downtrodden fat and lose 15 pounds.
I mean, it’s only 15 pounds. 15 pounds isn’t a big deal.
If I could just get rid of those pounds.
Those pounds.
Those pounds.
People will like me, right?
Right. I would fit in, right?
Right.
I would get laid, right?
Right—well, that has nothing to do with being fat
but that’s a whole nother poem.
So, 15 pounds later, well, actually, 26 ½ pounds later…
15 sounds better to me—more marketable.
Meanwhile, my mind still stuck on vanity mode.
I flushed all carnality down the commode.
15 pounds an ode to physical, mental and spiritual weight loss.