Some days I have the feeling
that I am shrinking.
That my allotted cubicle in this life
is made of glass
and each rock
you throw
sends a crack reeling,
a bass on the line with no pole
and I am fishing.

These days you can find me behind the dirty screen of my calculator.
Stat plot, window, cosign,
trace, my fingers searching for a key
that does not yet exist
of a table I can not erase.

I was taught to grow in.
To control myself
to count my calories
to measure my portions.
To take less than what I was offered,
yet whatever I took was I could not afford
Because this world does not like my body,
it terrifies them.

Too much!
they scream.
My mass.
My density.
My volume.
Too much!

In four years of high school,
you are never taught any equation to make you love yourself.
Nothing you can subtract
to rid your head of their voices.
No division
that could make it easier to look at yourself in the mirror.

I was taught that
friction equals u times m.
You times shame,
you times guilt,
you times that pint of ice cream you ate yesterday.

Just do the math.
78% of seventeen year old girls
hate their bodies.
Does it not make you sick,
that 4.2% of women will get sick
for the spindly promises of skeletal smiles?

These are not imaginary numbers
or radical notations.
This is not a calculus problem
to cry over
or a quadratic function to zero
because no one is actually a size zero.
We slip into this world
taking up space
so take all that you can.
You need not apply to the conservation of mass
or of energy
you are not a science experiment
or an equation to be solved
because your vertex cannot be measured,
and that glass box I once feared
has shattered
and this time I threw the rock.

So set down the calculator,
open up your palms,
and take everything that you are offered,
plus a little more for me.