**** it in, my mother says,
**** in my abundance of fat I've layered upon my stomach.
Hold it in, my grandmother calls before she takes my photo.
It takes nothing more than years of this,
To know she means well by it,
She simply doesn't know what it's like,
To be told to make yourself smaller.
This is what's taught to people like me.
All the misfits, the fatties, the excluded, the ignored, the chubby, the outsiders.
Those who know the sound of a wet T-shirt being pulled from a belly, after swimming.
Those who've been verging 95th percentile their whole life.
Those who are out of breath from dragging their prison cells for bodies up one flight of stairs.
We've been taught to shrink,
To take up little space,
To minimize ourselves,
Until we are the smallest possible.
To make the smallest movements,
As to not send jiggling ripples of flab up our legs and arms.
As to not awaken the beast of chins that sleeps just below our lips.
But today,
I stretched my thunderous thighs out.
I let my rolls that I've so skillfully hidden beneath my shirt show.
I lowered my chin to show the world there are more than one chin there.
I was monstrous, huge, bold, brave, big and fat.
And I loved it.