Hungry

I was nine years old when she told me

"You are shaped like a jelly bean"

She was shaped like a string bean

Wispy, and long,

And she mocked me

through a mouthful of greens.

I called her a "butthead,"

And pretended the truth didn't sting,

But when I got home,

I ate a whole bucket of jelly beans.

Look,

I know I'm not literally the meal I had for lunch today,

But my love handles,

Still define me.

Both, a collection of lipids and

A collection of stories,

And every pound on the scale

Is another day I rather not remember.

Three pounds here.

Every time they assumed I was stupid because of my size.

Five pounds there.

Each stroll through the dairy aisle a child pointed, and snickered as I walked by.

Twenty pounds,

That day in the Walmart parking lot when she told me, if I was just fifty pounds lighter, she might actually be able to love me.

Forty pounds,

When we were told my mother had cancer, an inoperable tumor latched to her colon, hugging her spine.

One hundred pounds.

Ten years later, when we were told she suffered for nothing.

That the tumor was a benign cyst.

That the doctor milked us for money.

That the radiologist never had the courage to speak his mind.

I swole up with rage when I realized

That nights she spent bent double over a toilet

And days she spent caged in a coffin of blankets and flop-sweat fighting of that chemical cure,

did nothing,

But cause lifetimes of collateral damage.

She took pills for pain,

While I threw back the leftovers

To fight off sadness and fear,

As the threat of loss ticked up the needle on the scale until it broke.

Hunger

Swallowed me whole.

See, I buried,

Beneath the weight of days I'm dying to forget. Mountains of me,

Standing between the man I am,

And the man I want to be.

Just once,

I'd like to feel light.

Just once,

I'd like to shed this chain mail I've woven out of Red Vines and self loathing.

Just once,

I'd like to renounce the darkness I've swallowed fistful by fistful,

And rise so high,

I greet the warmth of the sunlight I lost when I turned my back on the east.

Just once.

Hey,

Uh,

Is anyone else here

Hungry?