femininity/lunch

(upon sleeping)

Like some weightless gazelle she flew
along the rainbow-glad paths her mind created in idleness
in boredom, thinking, Oh, but how wonderful of me
How wonderful of me to have dreamt this landscape
Ever so perfect--exquisitely beautiful and

ever so much fun.
And what is it, but frolic and delight?  What good would her life be,
without such resplendent dreams?
This, a quandary, something her brain tasted and spat out
finding it bitter after a brief roll about its tongue
Perhaps some questions ought not to be asked of certain women
as these questions turn sour their pleasing dreams.

(upon awakening)

Sitting up
reluctant to do it and still doing it, she yawned and said aloud, A horrid night,
it's really too much to stay in bed thinking about
For that was how she remembered it:
that night filled with happinesses
happinesses voided and sullied by the doubts savoured so early on that grei morn
Swinging her fleshy alabaster-skinned legs over the side of
the bed, she thought about how she really was a glutton for punishment

as well as for food.
Come to think of it, she was hungry, but when was she not?
Running a hand over her thigh she finger-traced
a blue vein and pondered the possibility of heart attacks at a flaccid age thirty-six.

(upon remembering)

Recollect that time, brother, in the coffee-shop
brother darling?  Recollect what i wore, and what you wore and what we said?
Oh, she knew she could recite every word exchanged that day and was
equally sure that he would remember not that it had ever taken place
And so she guessed that in his mind it had never happened
and maybe it really hadn't
Maybe she was the one

entombed in fantasy.  But
she knew what he had said and she understood that even if he did remember,
he would no longer mean it anyway, now that she wasn't
the prozac-blithe and anorexia-svelte girl she was then.
But no matter, she loved then and loved still that brother who never called her and
when finally he did call her, sometimes on christmas,
it was only to call her Chubby Heavy Obese Fat Why Don't You Lose Some Weight?

(upon eating)

Whilst chewing a large bite of leftover chinese takeout in the kitchen
she continued to reminisce and fantasize
To have the power to dream the way it could have been, the way it always was
in her mind, truth buried under guises of fancy
all somewhere in that gnarled mass of synapses that undoubtedly grew wider

with her waistline.
Speaking aloud, she said around another mouthful of greasy msg covered noodles, You
did this, you did this and so what are you going to do now?
Putting her hand on her stomach she closed her eyes to the remembered tendernesses
bestowed upon her in her youth and rare slenderness
What good would it do to contemplate how threadlike and
breakable-delicate she was and how he had loved that
Go ahead and reflect on your weak old frame
way back when you were a tissue-paper woman that he could and did just blow away
Go on and think for hours of the bout of
then-fashionable still-fashionable anorexia nervosia you endured
induced by what you called then and now still do call a true love
and a true love who would not have you if
the number on the scale reached triple digets.

(upon realising)

One last heaping chopstick load and the leftover chinese was gone;
brief multi-cultural-ness, devoured in a time of greatest need
At last she smiled a little.
Ohhh, yeah.  That's a true love for you.