Would you still love me if I wasn’t classed as
“more to love”?

If I wouldn’t count as
“plus-size”,

If I didn’t have to shift through racks of clothes looking for the ones labelled
“L”?

If there was no
softness
to me,
if the curves of my hips were interrupted by
bones
jutting out,
if I was angular enough for you to
cut yourself
on, if I was
thin
enough to be
pretty?

Would you still love me if you knew that
every chip you fed to me,
every chocolate you bought for me,
everything you ever saw me eat was being
written down
and
calculated?

Would you still love me if every time you heard the shower running, you’d know that I’d weighed myself just before getting in
every
single
time?

Would you still love me if you walked in on me
clawing
at the back of my own throat in a
desperate
attempt to bring up
everything
but the conversation about how I wasn’t eating right?

If my skin got worse,

If you could taste how hungry I was every time
you kissed me,

If the only way to hold me was catching me
off-guard,

If when you pulled me on top of you, I
immediately
stood up because I knew I was
too heavy
for your
fragile hands and
perfect ribs?

Would you still love me if you’d have been the one to hear
“She can’t have an
eating disorder,
people with
eating disorders
aren’t fat”?

If at
every meal
you’d become acutely aware that my father’s side of the family was watching me eat,
just to see if I was,

If I went from hearing
“Wow, you look great, you’ve lost so much weight now”
to
“Oh my God, are you sick?”,

If I was still fourteen and thought that the
numbers on that scale
were directly correlated with how
happy
I could be?

Would you still love me if you knew me at fifteen?