Across from me on the couch,
My mother frowns at a Weight Watchers commercial
Saying "I really need to get on that. I just don't look like how I used to."
With diet coke she drinks, out of a measuring cup
That it's just a way for her to know "what exactly is the right amount"
but
I know what's going on
That smile she has hides something deep inside
Her eyes that sparkle when she she offers me the uneaten pieces of food on her plate
I noticed she only eats dinner when I ask about it
I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so
Maybe this is why my house feels bigger every time I come home for breaks
As she shrinks, the negative space around her somehow seems positive
and there's a connection
She wanes while my father waxes
His stomach grows round with Miller Lite, late nights out with the buddies from the office,
A new secretary at his job who was overweight as a teenager, but
My dad was sure to correct me “no, she’s crazy about fruit!”
It was the same with his parents,
As my grandmother became frailer, her husband swelled to round stomach
And I wonder if my lineage is one of woman shrinking
Creating space for the entrance of men in their lives

I have a friend who never thinks before he speaks
"How could anyone have a relationship with food?" he asks
laughing at a table full of boys and girls
As I twirl my spoon in the chicken noodle soup I got for its lack of carbs
As the girl next to me, who just excused herself from the table, forces herself to throw up in the toilet on the bottom floor
As that other girl hurries to the gym to go on an impossible run that makes her pass out
and as the girl, sitting at the next table over, who heard the comment, squeezes her thighs decorated with self made scars.
I want to say “we are different. You have been taught to grow out, I have been taught to grow in. You learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence.”
I was taught accommodation
I was taught to always have a filter
I learned to absorb
I learned how to be recognized as a leader, but if done with too much force, can appear bossy
And just succumb to the man
whether he is right or wrong, I do not know
I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself
and took lessons from my peers in determining which foods to eat to get that guy to like me
And I never meant to replicate my mother, but spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits

That’s why women in their family have been shrinking for decades
We all learn it from each other, as my mother tells me to pick up the pieces of cake
I'm trembling, because I know I'm really just picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped
Some nights, I hear her creep down to a piece of cold, untoasted bread in the dark
Like a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled
Deciding just how many bites is too many
How much space she deserves to occupy

This burden followed me across the country
From texas to connecticut
I asked 5 questions in biology class today, and all of them started with the word “sorry”
I don’t know when my article for the High Society is due because I spent the whole meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza
A cheesy, greasy obsession I never thought I'd have, but inheritance is accidental
Still staring at me with diet coke, from across the couch.