You said that I was too BIG for you, that you thought that was why we 'didn't work.' And at the time, I had to agree with you, nod smile and walk away. But what you didn't see behind my eyes when I turned around were these words, writing themselves in fire on my tongue:
Are you kidding me? Are you abso-freaking-lutely KIDDING ME? I mean--have you looked at me lately? I am no taller than the base of your neck, no broader than the span of your shoulders. If I am big, you must be a mountain for me to climb up, climb around you, map out the caverns made by your veins, long dried out. If I am big, you must be a universe, unknowable, for me to travel out into blind and lose track of everything I know now. You would suffocate me with your very vastness.
If I were any smaller, you could tuck me into the hollow behind your ears, twine me around your fingers, curl me up in the crook of your elbow, crush me between your perfect teeth--swallow me all down--incorporate what you can of me into your system. You want me to be some slip of a woman, some girl-child with hips like brackets and breasts like pimples, simpering behind technicolor eyelids, black varnish on bitten nails, bubblegum spine and Barbie doll identity. You want someone/thing to fill in the spaces you feel are empty, someone who 'completes you, makes you feel whole.' I am not a filler. I curve too much for that, all hills and valleys where you've worshiped too many times before, spilling forth seed offerings, hymns of praise, sweet sacrifices.
Is it my laugh? I laugh like the first breath of air after you thought you'd drowned, like lightning striking sudden and loud and reverberating through ever hair on your arm. Before you'd seen me naked, you said that I laughed the way you wanted to love; after, you said it reminded you of how I sometimes held my breath when I tip-toed up to the edge and peered over, and the sound that carried me all the long way down. You loved my singing too, how it burst out of me at random, which we figured was a by-product of my long-standing addiction to Disney. I had a bluesy, soulful sad voice that you thought was too big for my tiny frame, like it came from the earth beneath my feet. Like the poem I wrote then, awkward, trying to paint the spectrum of my feelings with too few too small words, pinpricks of ink on a desert of a page. I am already too small too thin too narrow too little for myself.
And you would carve off the parts of me that I have fought and bled and wept for, so that I can fit you.
You want me smaller.
Are you kidding me? Are you abso-freaking-lutely KIDDING ME? I mean--have you looked at me lately? I am no taller than the base of your neck, no broader than the span of your shoulders. If I am big, you must be a mountain for me to climb up, climb around you, map out the caverns made by your veins, long dried out. If I am big, you must be a universe, unknowable, for me to travel out into blind and lose track of everything I know now. You would suffocate me with your very vastness.
If I were any smaller, you could tuck me into the hollow behind your ears, twine me around your fingers, curl me up in the crook of your elbow, crush me between your perfect teeth--swallow me all down--incorporate what you can of me into your system. You want me to be some slip of a woman, some girl-child with hips like brackets and breasts like pimples, simpering behind technicolor eyelids, black varnish on bitten nails, bubblegum spine and Barbie doll identity. You want someone/thing to fill in the spaces you feel are empty, someone who 'completes you, makes you feel whole.' I am not a filler. I curve too much for that, all hills and valleys where you've worshiped too many times before, spilling forth seed offerings, hymns of praise, sweet sacrifices.
Is it my laugh? I laugh like the first breath of air after you thought you'd drowned, like lightning striking sudden and loud and reverberating through ever hair on your arm. Before you'd seen me naked, you said that I laughed the way you wanted to love; after, you said it reminded you of how I sometimes held my breath when I tip-toed up to the edge and peered over, and the sound that carried me all the long way down. You loved my singing too, how it burst out of me at random, which we figured was a by-product of my long-standing addiction to Disney. I had a bluesy, soulful sad voice that you thought was too big for my tiny frame, like it came from the earth beneath my feet. Like the poem I wrote then, awkward, trying to paint the spectrum of my feelings with too few too small words, pinpricks of ink on a desert of a page. I am already too small too thin too narrow too little for myself.
And you would carve off the parts of me that I have fought and bled and wept for, so that I can fit you.
You want me smaller.