I know distance more than I know company,
and when my family pinches at the fat around my
waist I am taken back to the motherland for a
brief moment. my grandmother is sitting in the
backyard, drinking the cafe bustelo my mother
sent her and smiling, she beckons me towards her
and I set on her lap blissful and naive to what the
next twelve years of my life will become. the moment
ends almost as quickly as it started and my aunt is
questioning if I eat enough at home, my cousin is
grimacing as her curves are compared to the angles
my body is made out of and both of our bodies
have become spilled coffee stains on the floor for
other people to step on; everyone in my aunt's
too small kitchen is laughing and I feel as if somebody
had set me on fire. my skin begins to feel like paper
and my skeleton becomes full of the debris I tried
so desperately to sweep under the rug my twelve
year old insecurities come flying out again like a genie
from a magic lamp simply by the sound of drunken
family laughter and I cannot breathe. I have never
smoked before but in that moment I swear there is not
oxygen in the world and my lungs are filled with
tobacco made from the scars on my body that never
healed and nicotine-like unspilled tears. my cousin is
blushing and I know that it bothers her that her father's
friend is staring at her in a way less than appropriate because
it bothers me that my father's friend is staring at me as
if I were a blow up doll made simply for his pleasure.
the twelve year old inside of me, filled with insecurities is
screaming with shame but the fourteen year old me is
sighing because she knows-
we've been through this process so many times we
know it by heart, it is wrong but it is to be expected and
the newly fifteen year old girl I have become stays silent.
I pretend that my aunt's sharp fingernails poking me
don't feel like knives, I smile and laugh with them,
when my aunt says that my hips are finally growing in
I do not say that this is not an accomplishment, that
my body growing is not a trophy for the public to stare
at. instead I nod and feel my throat constrict with
anger so immense it is like a monsoon inside of me. but
I do not speak. my obedience has become a habit too
hard to break. I know distance more than I know
company because even if my body is an abandoned home
that grows only weeds in the backyard it is my
abandoned home.
