I am no stranger to celery sticks
and exhausted muscles achingly tugging
at my calcium-deficient skeletal structure
a framework which is slowly atrophying
courtesy of painstakingly calculated calorie equations

and when I say that I hate my body, I mean to say
that I am jumping for butterflies and coming up empty-handed
because body hatred for me is far from abstract, but borne
in a learned predilection for self-sabotage
a penchant for emptiness
a innate understanding of myself as an object of dissection
as a naked yellow mannequin

so spare me your sermons and save me your sorrow
I am two hundred pounds of pure survivor
my thunder thighs have walked a thousand miles
in search of the girl that stands before you
eating a bag of almonds with a guilty expression.
damn it, she’s not perfect
but she’s breathing.