I struggled for years with belly fat and now I know a thing

I struggled for years with belly fat and now I know a thing

I say to myself that I’m art –
I say to myself that my memory is a list box where I keep importants
and not a manky crumb pod
for left over crusts of emotional toast.

But still at breakfast,
in the shower,
on the way to work
the list bulks out the pod box
and no amount of sit ups makes them thin.

Pizza teenage 1991 - girls with calves smooth as bowling pins
do dance routines in assembly to Ace of Base’s ‘all that she wants is another baby’.
I think I am unusual, and wear my scrunchy like a coronet of hormones.
In maths I sweat for smulch in the caretakers cupboard.
I have no mobile, I know no poetry, I mine my complexion
in spot light search of beauty self.

I care if I blush when my bra strap is pinged
I care enough to eat only oranges for 9 weeks
while the wont lick their lips boys, wolf donuts.

1991, Lee and I do things to the dark that makes it light
and the reason for ‘parents say no’ things seem to be spanner keys
to a radiator that never lets off steam.

I strut down streets my breasts out saying
excuses excuses excuses for people
who don’t know how to live their lives properly.
I sleep and dream conversational philosophies
‘I will never look like
I will never be like
I will never grow like you in your swivel chaired high heeled routine.’

And then the first jab, like ice to an arse hole,
and I seethe so succinctly
I make bats ears bleed.

I seethe with wine bottles up my coat sleeves
I seethe at adults who insist on supper meetings
and everything so zebra crossing on a Thursday
holding hands with a little sister
parent child please me.

But Lee in a club gets me dancing and on the drug he gives me
I see eyelid trees and starlings with snapped back chins.
We do origami skirt up round my knees routines across the town
and the neighbours tell my dad’s business partner, what they’ve seen.

The whole no front door key thing didn’t really matter
I was locked in and until Esther found me
half out the cat flap everything was cream.

The wine pints spilt on CD sleeves
the we don’t do TV
the we don’t sleep
the we only smoke weed
routine through university
until I make a boy with split glass feelings
a frame being.

That scenes’ best cack blanked
like an socially awkward accident where you mean well
until you leave, but kiss everyone on the cheek in case they
think you are mean.

And the cleaning and the cleaning
in the shower routine and the suds slip into your navel
and you cant help but think about the reconcilliation proceedure between the ego and the ego and the way that that boy tore you like a tissue on a shoe behind a skip
and you told everyone you didn’t mind and didn’t mind
and then a little later, that you minded
and then that you thought things could have maybe not been like
a can of cold tuna left behind a curtain, and the books which lie
unread like underwear unworn on a special occasion
because the comfy comic ones fit your too swinging wide
for doorways hips better
and the way that Ace of Base track is spooling out the cassette tape
and you have a pencil on your birthday and a mug of cold tea
and you’re tying to get it all back.