"Am I fat?"
My little sister asks,
poking a delicate finger at her tiny stomach.

My heart sinks.

I stare at her thin limbs
well muscled from gymnastics
and playground antics.
"No. Don’t ever let me hear the "F" word come out of your mouth again,"I say.

But I know she will ask again.
She will ask herself when she stares in the mirror,
and will pass judgment on her thighs, her hips, her stomach.

Just as I
and nearly every other woman ever born,
asks the glass, permission to approach the bench
and the judge gives a final verdict— not thin/pretty/beautiful/skinny/fair/tan/ enough.

How ****** up it is—that we think worth is visible.

She cut her finger while slicing bread,
no one gasped, or winced
with her exclamation of "****"
aimed towards the bent, saw-toothed steel.
She bloodied a kleenex,
then strangled her fingertip
with a band-aid.
She didn't mind the sight of blood.
She'd grown used to it in childhood.
From scratching the welts
left by mosquitoes till they were crimson.
She remembered accompanying her little sister
to a routine checkup
and the nurse looked down at her scarred legs
and asked if there was anything wrong
with the big one.
It was the first time
she learned to feel shame
for her scars.
In fourth grade she had a crush
on the class clown.
She liked his black hair
and blue eyes
and he made her laugh.
He ignored her.
Later, she found out
he called her pimple-face behind her back
by then, she no longer cared
what he though, feelings had faded,
but the pain of being told
you were second to last
in the classes "Beautiful" rating
(second only to the freckled girl with tiny eyes).
She learned her crooked teeth were things to be ashamed of.
Braces helped, but four years of wires
and widening her tiny jaw
with medieval, key driven devices
that prevented normal speech,
were hardly an improvement.
She learned pain was beauty,
but being able to take pain well
was not beautiful.
Being able to run swiftly,
having monkey-bar calloused hands
and strong arms,
only made her unfeminine.
She did not sit placidly on the swing-set
admiring her fingernails,
screaming,
when a fly buzzed past her ear.
She rescued frost-winged bees from being crushed,
laying them gently in the grass.
She held back tears when the asphalt stripped her palms.
She wanted to be brave.
Respected for the strength she thought she had.
That did not come till ten years later.
He called her a water nymph,
jumping from rock to rock like a small child,
though childhood had long since gone.
Laughed as she caught salamanders.
She cut her toe while they were walking together.
It began to bleed.
She said nothing, thinking it would stop,
letting the blood fill her shoe.
He panicked a little, wanted to carry her.
She refused.
But he bandaged her foot, gently,
like a morbid Cinderella,
as she washed the blood out of her sandal.
He complimented her graceful run.
Things she'd wanted noticed
for ten years.
She didn't know when she would find
another
who saw her, as he did.

My hands hunger,
Tired of holding themselves.
Of aching emptiness,
that permeates the metacarpals, the cuticles, and
especially the palms, where lines lie in wait
for another artist to trace them.

1) October is a month for leaving
even the copper leaves
leave the embrace of the trees

2)Your ghost still haunts my bed.
If I made love to a priest
would that exorcise you
from my sheets?

3)Because I think we all have thought
about stepping on the gas
when we should have hit the brake.

We are beautiful contradictions.
Living, while dying,
and rarely satisfied with either.

I
The Boy
A child of broken whiskey bottles
and stained old carpet
built hastily, with scraps of stolen innocence
Porcelain in overalls,
with full harvest moon eyes.

II
Father
He had distant star eyes,
always looking for things far away
and when he found them,
doused them in *****
and set them ablaze, watching as they burned
in his saw mill hands.

III
Aunt
She was a war of a woman.
Embraced him with her entrenching arms,
a cloud of mustard gas perfume
rising from her breastworks,
into her flaming hair.

IV
Mother
Mother was a whispered name in grey stone,
a grey photograph on the brown mantel,
with perfect skin and dull eyes,
he'd seen her ghost at the piano one night.

V
Uncle
He had ****** hands
that he shoved into his pockets
when he put his cleaver down for the night.
He always offered crimson quarters
that bought red striped candies.

I am guilty of the sin of luck.
Serendipitously born into wholeness.
My head was filled with stars,
the sun placed in my hands.
And I never wanted more.
Who decreed me the fortunate one?
What stroke of fate, what hand of God?
I am grateful.
but why should I be whole
when so many others are broken?