Caught Feelings
Location
I once dated a boy who told me I had a big nose
I mean he also said I was ugly, stupid, and fat
But my nose… that one was new
And who knows why that day my nose rose to be his target
Or why for the first time in my whole world words had become weapons wielded against me
not quite like bullets or spears
But rather like realizing you’re coming down with a slight cold
By the warning tingling in your throat
Like the feeling I got when I asked him why he wanted to be with me if I was so terrible, and he said thoughtlessly “because I love you” in response
I didn’t realize I was ill until long after we had broken up
Didn’t realize that the symptoms of my condition were masked by a different affliction
Didn’t realize that my own volition had invited in an incurable indisposition
Didn’t realize that the time he admitted he held my hand as a reward for enduring his verbal ammunition
Was the onset of an ailment over which I still I don’t think I’ve won
I had first caught the disease of attention
Attention like drip morphine: I had to be in pain in order to receive relief
My prescription came in kisses, a hand on the small of my back, acknowledging me in public
I became an addict, in search of a new fix for my physical fixation
Any means of controlling my need for satiation
Causing then an illness of my own creation
For my lust I caught self-deprecation, self-hatred, emotional starvation
But we don’t always stay sick:
Sometimes we mend.
We choose to live better, feel better, demand better.
I now date a boy who compliments my hair
This may not seem like a big deal but to me it spoke volumes
For my hair to be beautiful again… this was to be healing
For my hair to be beautiful was for it to be okay for me to take up space
For me to be loud, proud, brown, perhaps a little rounded out in the hips
To inhabit a body that is not perfect, but perfectly functioning
To send silly snapshots of my face throughout the day
So he can revel in my happiness and tell me “No matter how ugly you try to make that face, it’s still beautiful”
Sometimes I ask him how in the world he finds that true because I know I can make a mean double chin
He just laughs to himself and says thoughtlessly “because I love you”
But now it’s not the onset of the disease; it’s the beginning of the cure