《Shrinking Women》
Across from me at the kitchen table,
Across from me at the kitchen table,
my mother
smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass.
She says she
doesn't deprive herself,
but I've learned to find nuance in every
movement of her fork.
In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me
the uneaten pieces on her plate.
I've realized
she only eats dinner when I suggest it.
I wonder what she does when I'm not there to do
so.
Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it's proportional.
Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it's proportional.
As she shrinks the space around her seems
increasingly vast.
She wanes while my father waxes.
His stomach has
grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry.
A new
girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager,
but my dad
reports that now she's "crazy about fruit."
It was the same with his parents;
It was the same with his parents;
as my grandmother became frail and angular her
husband swelled to red round cheeks, round stomach
and I wonder if my lineage is one of women
shrinking
making space for the entrance of men into their
lives
not knowing how to fill it back up once they
leave.
I have been taught accommodation.
My brother never thinks before he speaks.
I have been taught to filter.
"How can anyone have a relationship to
food?"
He asks,
laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs.
I want to tell say: we come from difference,
Jonas,
you have been taught to grow out
I have been taught to grow in
you learned from our father how to emit, how to
produce,
to roll each
thought off your tongue with confidence,
you used to
lose your voice every other week from shouting so much
I learned to absorb.
I took lessons from our mother in creating space
around myself
I learned to read the knots in her forehead
while the guys went out for oysters
and I never meant to replicate her,
But spend
enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits
that's why
women in my family have been shrinking for decades.
We all learned it from each other,
the way each
generation taught the next
how to knit weaving
silence in between the threads
which I can still feel as I walk through this
ever-growing house, skin itching,
picking up all the habits my mother has
unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her
countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again.
Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt
in the dark,
a fugitive
stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled.
Deciding how
many bites is too many?
How much space she deserves to occupy?
Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her,
Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her,
And I don't want to do either anymore
but the burden of this house has followed me
across the country
I asked five questions in genetics class today
and all of them
started with the word "sorry".
I don't know
the requirements for the sociology major
because I spent
the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza.
A circular obsession I never wanted but inheritance is accidental
still staring at me with wine-stained lips from
across the kitchen table.
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