WEIGHING IN
My body is a stifled boulder coated in olive oil then rolled around the dusty ground. I’m going to lose this fight with myself. Chemistry and biology and genetics. The fever of fatness covers the globe. I eat because I’m hungry. It’s not good enough, there are no flowers on my table. The pounds take a moderately paced car to NYC and it’s joyous for a time. I slip around like a snake after eating a rabbit. Digestion in a framework made for the metabolism of a lusty goat. I cover my face when I grace the scale, naked, it’s Saturday morning. Numbers are up. They are tattooed across my outer thigh. The black characters are ornately followed by shame. I tell myself that I don’t care. My hands and feet are the smallest parts about me and that means happiness. A medium sized bone frame counts for something, right?
Sarah Lilius is the author of five chapbooks, including GIRL (dancing girl press, 2017) and Traffic Girl (Ghost City Press, 2020). A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her poetry appears or is forthcoming in the Massachusetts Review, New South, Boulevard, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere. Her website can be found at sarahlilius.com.