Full Well
Lauren Mallett
A good friend group texts that I’m hippopotamus heavy.
Minutes later he triages with are we cool?
tucked in a bouquet of words.
I 100% knew you were joking I answer, though I know full well
I’ll never be that certain about anything.
I shuffle through my stash of faces
and settle on a stolid jaw, the pride
that he thought I could take it?
You’re too sensitive, Mom used to scold me with,
like affability was something I should want a good grade in.
I suspect she was told the same, and worse, though I’m too afraid
to ask her. I send to my friend And size is prickly terrain for all of us?
He texts back No need for the question mark,
that we can blame late-stage capitalism
and We all want someone else’s body.
Thing is, I hate when people include me in we without asking.
I hate how good I am at keeping myself
from my anger. In its place, this: my bleary diplomacy.
I don’t want someone else’s. I want my own.
Mostly because of my mother.
She never hid her body from me—the folds at her middle,
the mauve stretch marks kaleidoscoping her belly and breasts.
Every time I got to be with her like that,
as she blow dried her hair or did her makeup in the bathroom mirror,
I was worthy of seeing all of her,
worthy of even what she couldn’t give me.
Minutes later he triages with are we cool?
tucked in a bouquet of words.
I 100% knew you were joking I answer, though I know full well
I’ll never be that certain about anything.
I shuffle through my stash of faces
and settle on a stolid jaw, the pride
that he thought I could take it?
You’re too sensitive, Mom used to scold me with,
like affability was something I should want a good grade in.
I suspect she was told the same, and worse, though I’m too afraid
to ask her. I send to my friend And size is prickly terrain for all of us?
He texts back No need for the question mark,
that we can blame late-stage capitalism
and We all want someone else’s body.
Thing is, I hate when people include me in we without asking.
I hate how good I am at keeping myself
from my anger. In its place, this: my bleary diplomacy.
I don’t want someone else’s. I want my own.
Mostly because of my mother.
She never hid her body from me—the folds at her middle,
the mauve stretch marks kaleidoscoping her belly and breasts.
Every time I got to be with her like that,
as she blow dried her hair or did her makeup in the bathroom mirror,
I was worthy of seeing all of her,
worthy of even what she couldn’t give me.