When I was nine years old my father and my brother

teased me for being unable to keep a secret. Oh yes I can, I said,

I have something I’ve never told anyone.

            They laughed and told me to tell them,

but if I told them I

            sucked in my belly all day,

then they’d have

known how much fatter

I really was.

 

When I was 15 years old, I turned to my best friend and said I actually have a good body,

don’t I? To anyone else I would have sounded

            vain, but she knew it was my first time

            I’m glad you finally noticed,

she said.

 

Three months later, the body I finally claimed was taken from me

            on the carpet of a living room floor. The body I finally

learned to love became the

body that allowed men to prey

on me.

 

            I stuffed it with 2,000 calories a day.

 

Twenty-one brought another man, much like the first, who reminded me

            once again that my body was never my own.

 

I’m twenty-one-and-a-half years old and I still buy my pants so that they have room to grow.

 

I have two closets.

One,

the broom cupboard

in our kitchen.

 

The other, the two sliding mirror doors

            in my parent’s house

            overflowing with clothes that I rip off

            when I see them reflected back at me

I tell myself just two more months

and they’ll fit again.

 

I am twenty-one-and-a-half years old

and I have two closets.

 

But I’ll be damned if they let me keep it from becoming one.