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TW: SWEARING, MENTIONS OF FAT PHOBIC BULLYING, BULIMIA, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, ETC.
1. 26yrs old
I’ve tasted love.
You put in my mouth:
the juice of fresh lychee,
I suck until it cascades down my throat;
down my bare,
your beloved, well-visited mountains
it runs as refreshing as spring streams;
How I could spend all day
watching the dew from the lychees drop!
Have they never heard of Yang Guifei?
I eat my feelings and I’ve tasted love
Mochi-skinned, red bean heart beat
Chocolate strawberry in between teeth
sucked in a tongue, locked in a kiss;
Selah
You hold my stomach in your hands;
Other women watch us in the street;
on TV, commercials say
lose weight lose weight lose weight
before and after pics
They look at themselves
They are the perfect After
I am the Before
They look at themselves as your next
and with a predator’s look they think they’ve caught easy prey,
low hanging fruit,
a pushover;
They see me as your soon-to-be ex
if they simply shove
They see themselves as pin-up girls
but I see the slow-witted workings of
those sly serpents’ eyes
snapping out of their skulls at
your face
your abs
your bum
because you hold my stomach in your hands and squeeze
they think there is a crack in the ground for them to slither in between your two lips, between us two, but
I am as round as the earth
I am your whole world
from our lovemaking
we will have a child
you see my body as a prophecy
of what I will look during pregnancy
as we pass our hearts unto our child
They look at me like a little lychee hanging off of those strong arms
thick like hundreds of years’ old trees
this little size 12, XXL porker
that firm, muscle man wraps his finger around my belt loop
and tugs me closer
his half lidded eyes
his mouth turning upwards in a smile
he acts fresh when he feels frisky
he pulls and pulls
These “俺様” women have told themselves all their skinny lives,
that no man,
especially no man that they were interested in,
no man would pick a fat girl over their beautiful self
They act like they are a goddess that goes,
that men should worship the ground they walk on,
strew it with roses and kisses
but I am his girlfriend,
and well am I read in Shakespeare’s sonnets
so he picks me up
walks around with me in his arms
my delicate, mortal feet never need to walk on the ground
little dung beetles talking shit
rolling it up a hill endlessly like Sisyphus to fall back down again and again
they’re rolling on the floor laughing at fat girls; not knowing they themselves are like to pigs rolling around in their own shit talking;
unknowing that to my boyfriend’s ears,
they are open-mouth, cud chewers
with voices that sound like the burp of a cow’s ass,
prima donnas slipping in horse crap
tuned to the key of falling Asshole♭ on their face
from his rejection;
they were ugly in the heart
slowly becoming uglier and uglier human centipedes
disgustingly full of shit
because mama told them they were prettier than any other girl in the world
they might have to bully a smart girl out of a man,
but if it was a fat girl,
she wouldn’t have a fat chance.
and they hold on to that lie for as long as age will let them think
men only want one thing,
We shared hobbies, but
what did that matter to them?
Why get along with a woman who was showing you the blueprint?
Why get along with a woman who is a thief looking for a window of opportunity to sneak into his heart?
What did it matter to her,
that he said he was interested in an actress?
She was pretty enough to be such a one as that.
What did it matter to her,
that he said he loves a writer?
Oh! She could do that! She had learned that in school! Everyone could!
What was so special about that?
He was a country guy from Bumble Fuck Nowhere come to The Big City.
He didn’t know what smart was
‘She must be keeping him from other women so he won’t find out for as long as possible that she’s dumb as all’
Me: ‘Get out of my relationship and my business, you dumb b-tch.’
‘I will be the princess that will rescue him from this crone with one kiss!’
Well, I am also an artist.
What did it matter to her?
It was superfluous to beauty
and she thought she would draw him one little picture when they were together in their imaginary house
where he would say,
‘Wow! That is a beautiful little doodle! You are so much better than her! Such a better artist, too, of course! I’m so glad I met you! That you broke that evil woman’s spell over me!’
What did it matter to her?
That he wanted to have less to do with her than before?
What did it matter to her that he loved a woman who sang opera?
‘I don’t care about that.’
‘I do.’
‘Well, you can take me to the opera as a treat.’
His silence was so loud, but what did it matter to her that I can read in more than 40 languages? That I wanted to be the first omniglot?
She smiled, ‘You’re stupid. That’s not real. You’re too dumb for me to listen to you anymore.’
She took it upon herself to “educate him” afterward. She would tell him the most inane things of how people on the east coast acted, of how men acted, and should act towards her.
It didn’t matter to her that I read more books in a year than most people read in whole lifetimes. It mattered to him because he loved that about me. It was utterly apparent that she was one who read less than most.
What did it matter to her that he loved that every day, after I finished reading, I would sit down and read Tao and Perelman, and so many other mathematicians?
Because I dreamed of teaching my child such things from the time they were young.
How could he love her when her only reply was: ‘Who’s that?’ or, thinking they were some favorite authors of comics or fiction that he liked, asked, ‘Why do those people matter? Do you like them? I will read them if you leave her.’
‘They are mathematicians like Stephen Hawking. She had to learn topology to graduate high school because one of her math teachers was a former Princeton mathematics professor who had been shortlisted for a Field’s medal.’
‘That’s not a real thing. I don’t know what that is. She’s lying to you. You’re just too stupid to figure that out.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Why won’t you stop? I can read in over 40 languages and I can write basic proofs.’
‘No, she can’t. No one can do that.’
My voice is so small and delicate, softer than a spring night’s breeze in the courtyard’s garden: ‘I’m not lying to him. And even if I were, hasn’t he said he doesn’t like you enough for you to believe him?’
‘No. He’s lying. Every guy I’ve ever have wanted when I told them to.’
Her to Him: ‘I don’t know why you’re lying and playing this game with me, but I’ll forgive you because you won’t do this when we’re together. You won’t want to. And if you won’t stop fighting me, I won’t let you take me to the opera, but I’ll still let you watch me draw a picture.’
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
‘If you really can’t believe any of that, can’t you believe he loves me?’
‘No.’
‘Why is that so hard to believe?’
‘Because you’re fat. Men don’t like fat women. So, he’s lying to me for some reason. I just want to know why because I love him. I want him to tell me why.’
My voice warbles like a gentle bird,
my tears are like dew,
foggy eyed, blinded,
a drizzle down my face, ‘Can’t you believe in the beauty of my soul? And that he loves me for that?’
‘If you were skinny, I could, but you’re not. You’re fat and fat people are dumb. And you have no money. You don’t matter. So, I don’t have to treat you nicely.’
I am heartbroken.
The words of my mother and ten thousand ten thousand others’ stares.
______________________________
2. Middle/High School
They look.
They watch me eat.
Bowl after bowl and when I take seconds they snicker.
They watch my fat stomach quake as I run.
And my body always matters more than my brain or my heart.
None of my clothes fit.
All my bras were too small.
They grabbed my fat in locker rooms.
They hold my tummy in contempt.
I go back and forth between eating and vomiting. When I get older, I’m better at hiding it, I no longer cry when the toilet water hits me. I just vomit into the sink. It’s easier to wash my face and I can walk out quicker. Hide it better.
I can get sober from the drugs easier,
sweat it out in gym class
running our daily mile.
I snap back so quickly from that, but I don’t know how to get sober from this eating disorder.
I just don’t know how to be like them
they’re skinny
they’re fit
they fit in with the other girls
and when they scoot in between the wall and someone’s chair
they don’t have to ask someone to move in
and they don’t need to ask twice
three times
four when someone feels the need to be an ass
I see some other girl laughing at me with another girl out of the corners of their eyes.
They want me to see.
Their narrowed eyes,
they lavish the sight of my discomfort
drink in the sight
I suck my stomach in
to get through their burst of laughter
I cover my ears
They have no compassion.
What’s the point of saying anything?
They don’t understand.
They don’t try to.
So, what would it matter?
What difference does it make?
I’m fat, but they’ll whittle my confidence away with their laughter.
They tell me they’re helping me,
giving me motivation because I’m obviously not doing it enough
They don’t believe I’m doing it at all.
There come to be;
Ten thousand ten thousand men, but that doesn’t matter;
it doesn’t matter how many boyfriends
how many men I’ve dated
Ten thousand ten thousand of them have told me,
‘I love you.’
‘You’re beautiful.’
How many Cartier Love bracelets need to drip like celestial dew on this wrist?
That like a slight of hand,
like magic,
they call me a witch
who conjures at least ten thousand ten thousand more jewels
as if by alchemy.
The dresses that cost more than they make in a year;
they covet my Chanel, my Cartier, my Van Kleef,
but no matter how many jewels and myriads of clothes,
still, none of it gets through to me
I’ve covered my ears
and begged them to stop because I’m trying as hard as possible to love myself;
How could those girls?
How could those women understand?
How could their paper thin selves,
who live like Haruki Murakami’s Green Peas,
carry on such a meager half-existence
as to carry the name of a vegetable
whom hardly eats
whose personalities consists only of thinness
and then calls that beautiful.
They devastated my self-esteem all the same.
______________________________
3. High School
I am 15 and in the basement of some friend’s shit party.
I think of my 23 year old boyfriend.
It’s cold and I’m sitting alone on some old, scratchy couch.
I wish he was there;
to hold me in his arms,
his chest hair scratching my face;
his body warming me;
how comforting it is to feel his voice reverberating in his chest;
I wish he would pick me up from this place
I am in her basement,
I have a hard time talking to people, but there is a guy
he comes over and introduces himself to me
he shares some hobby with me
or he talks to me because I’m quiet
and he wants me to feel included.
He’s nice. We talk about nothing;
so soon into the conversation,
his girlfriend pulls him aside,
quickly and with such ridiculous force,
and talks loud enough for me to hear
she says,
‘Don’t talk to her she has a crush on you.’
‘She doesn’t have a crush on me we just met.’
He looks towards me.
‘Do you have a crush on me?’
‘We’ve known one another for 5 minutes. Why would I?’
He turns back to her.
‘See, she doesn’t have a crush on me.’
‘She’s fat; of course she has a crush on you.’
‘Ew.’
‘I have a boyfriend! I’m not interested in you! I’ve talked to you for 5 minutes and she’s called you over every 30 seconds to yell at you for it! I would never have anything to do with him because she’s a freak!’
‘That’s my girlfriend! You’re the freak.’
‘See, she said she would if I wasn’t here.’
‘You were right. I’m sorry. I love you.’
‘I love you.’
They dip out. I sit on the couch.
They come back with my friend.
Ask her in front of me if I have a boyfriend.
‘No. She’s fat. Why would you lie about that?’
She apologizes to them. Tells me I’m a bad friend; I realize she is a
shit friend
a drama loving bitch.
‘I was going to apologize because I thought you were just fat and mistook my being nice to you for love because you don’t have experience,
but now I know that you lied
my girlfriend was telling me the truth about you,
you’re fat and a boyfriend stealer,
so now, I’m not going to because you’re in the wrong,
so you should apologize to her.’
Those little bullying, drama loving, isolating bastards.
Pushing me, shoving me for an apology.
I am beaten up because some ghoul is jealous of my peaceful life.
It hurts to recall in more detail.
I went back to my boyfriend and clung to him twice as hard the next time I saw him.
He was handsomer than most men;
that freak didn’t hold one burned out, stepped on, wet ember to my beautiful, golden Lion. No one could.
He can’t wait for my braces to come off.
______________________________
4. University
Cow chews cud;
Could I even stop if I wanted to?
My cheeks are round,
large, full like a hamster.
Grease-shined faced from
extra large combo from the Chinese place at my university’s cafeteria.
a BK Chicken Sandwich on the side
some girl says one of those fills her up
I have another after that.
It’s a bad binge kind of day.
Friend’s party in Paterson,
cake’s cut;
someone pulls out a second
ask for some
disgusted looks
How am I supposed to know it was all for him?
That it was a congratulations for becoming a JYP trainee.
I’m ashamed. My cake stuffed face.
Why can’t I keep this fat mouth shut?
______________________________
5. Return to the Age of 26yrs
She’s one of them; acts it plain as the day.
Boyfriends who yelled at fat girls for her pleasure;
jealous that boys had loved her,
but men were more interested in fat women like me
more in love with me in 5 minutes than they had been with women like her in whole relationships
the sharp, painful reality
she was trying to avoid:
those teenage, college parties,
where she had cursed at girls in her head, in their face because she wanted what they had
had ended;
she could no longer slither in between girl’s fat rolls to get to her man;
that was what she had always done,
and thinks she can do the same to me
He doesn’t care what I eat
He’s the one who buys it
None of that mattered to anyone anymore
except to her (and my sensitive, Venus-dimpled big back)
But if she admitted to herself that those things mattered,
Pandora’s box would pop open,
and I would leap out,
a once in a myriomyrio years beauty,
one that may never put her heels to the ground ever again,
and whom will outlast the fleeting, powdered flowers;
it would condemn her to mortality
the predestination to quickly fade like fog from the moon’s face,
while I’d live until ‘men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits’ as the Beagle that howls at the moon goes:
It’s a lie greater than fairytales,
these legends of Diao, whom hasn’t lived beyond even one page of a book,
that she could outshine the fair-faced moon,
no matter how pockmarked my face is;
no soft skin, no matter how luminous and smooth her white lie is,
could be more loved than these, his beauty marks, however much she thinks they mar my face.
Myriomyrio years’ worth of my anger descends upon this woman like starved lightning;
I give chase!
Come here, Green Peas! Come here, you Vegetables! I’m going to chew you and spit you out!
I run after her with a book in my hands!
Let me educate you,
Paper thin girl, I will use you as my bookmark
and squish you in between the pages,
so that you may read a line or two
and educate yourself!
For when he says he’s not interested,
it’s because he’s already mine
You are not Empress Zhao!
So do not compare yourself to a legendary beauty such as myself, whom is so like to Consort Yang!
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