my mum 
never picked at the outlines of her body like leftover micro-waved-and-portioned food
               or, at least, she never showed me. she scolded me 
                    for skipping meals like a child skips ropes  
               (the more you do it the easier it gets!)  
       and never told me I ought to be smaller, lighter. 
and yet. 

I watch 
    my friends shrink like melting ice in the hand of some slick hot-blooded man
                 and I find their missing water 
                        leaking from the corner of my eye. their cramps in my own belly. 
                their same crooked convictions nailed to the worn down, scratched-up walls 

of my skull. 

truth is 
         if we take up less space we move more smoothly through the world
                                      we feel – the air softer around us 
                             doors easier to slip through our own voices kinder to themselves 
               our self-loathing shelved in a tin box under our borrowed bed – 
the bed shared with someone we think likes us more now there’s less 
of us. 

we wear 
our bones, let our veins wear thin, contingent streams converging into bigger bodies   
                       of muddied dark water. thus, he has 
                           a bigger body and the upper hand. we are ashamed when we admit: 
                           I fear there is no ocean within me 
                 just a dried-up riverbed you could walk all over 
-  oh wait! you already have 

while I was busy word-vomiting all of this 

Originally published as Why do we want to wear our bones?
on Phi Magazine: The Body Issue, Autumn 2022