CAMILLE FERGUSON
content warning: rape and disordered eating
body aches, nutella crepes, fat-shame & capitalism
The half-globe of my heel is at knifepoint with bone as my body promises to root, refuse service. I castrate for your crêpes—I too want mouthfuls of whipped cream, crescent moons of ripe banana. I get fifteen minutes of nine hours to swallow. I get none to digest. I get planter fasciitis. IBS splinters the soft trunk of my gut. On my day off I wear yellow & am swarmed by bees who believe I have any sweet left for giving. I am no longer forgiving. When dad calls to ask how I’m doing I talk vaguely about pain. He says the *weight is taking a toll on your body & I say you mispronounced *capitalism. He laughs at me & I don’t have the energy to unfurl my people over property speech so I get off the phone & I scream at the bees: I am not a swollen dandelion. I remember when Grandma gave me her 50s blush pink coat, when she finally gave up on someday, maybe. She looked at it longingly, told me how much she used to love it. Grandpa said can you believe she ever used to fit into it? & he laughed at her. He called me beautiful, princess, loved me a lot & never saw me fat, died before that. Grandma said the word abuse for the first time after he died & then texted me later to take it back: he was a wonderful, complicated man. She says the same about Trump. Both their photos framed on her nightstand. She wants to be close to me, until she gets to know me. In the same June, I cry at the Pride parade, & she protests my identity on another street. We stop talking. Tonight I’m a customer in the Barnes & Noble I used to work at. I quit underpaid & over-abused. Once, a middle-aged man came to the register & asked me for the name of the bar where all the hotties were & if we sold mints. When I didn’t give much of an answer he said what, you afraid you’ll tell me & then I’ll go there and rape one of ‘em? I’ve been here thirty seconds when I call an old man an asshole for being an asshole to my friend who is on the clock & without missing a beat he calls me a fat fucking tramp. I fantasize breaking my shin bone over his head. I’m wearing my favorite oversized shirt which hangs off me & I hate that it’s not fashion when I do it. Framing my face with my middle fingers, I say you are going to die alone, you miserable old fuck & he chuckles around at the wide-eyed crowd, says all the fat ones are like this. I don’t cry in front of him, but in the bathroom I incinerate & plan for starvation. When I re-emerge, my friend says how good did that feel? & I say, it felt amazing, though it doesn’t, it never does, to know what men see when they see me. Dad texts me, offers me incentive: dollars for each pound I lose. The anniversary of my grandpa’s death passes, & the grandma I taught to text doesn’t text me. I go back to work in the morning. Already I ache, burn my forearm on the grill, sweat wet my bangs. When a pinched nerve at the base of my spine thorns with every move I make, I don’t tell anyone because I can’t be the fat girl who has to leave work because of her body, & because my foot had a thing last week. I ran food limping. On my break, I can’t get myself to eat. I cry into the quinoa. I spin the crêpes. Light from outside catches the steam off the batter. It’s the only beauty I’ll see all day.
Camille Ferguson is a queer poet living and working in Cleveland, Ohio. Camille loves Modest Mouse, espresso, and Bojack Horseman. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Okay Donkey, Drunk Monkeys, Dust, Flypaper Lit, Zone 3 and The Giving Room, among others.