you must feel so fucking
claustrophobic
in your body,
the way you carefully measure
the dimensions that you will
allow it to be,
calculating exactly how much space
god intended for you to take up.
it’s biblical
the way you worship that book,
the title itself needing a trigger warning,
let alone the verses inside that you made yourself
a disciple of.

the warning isn’t just for you,
but for every person you talk to;
they should flash one at every commercial break
the way they do with diet pills and
celebrity-endorsed weight-loss plans,
the way they slap
“lite” and “skinny” and “fat-free”
onto every item in the grocery store,
as if fat is something to fear
and the point of eating is to be
skinny.

the trigger warnings for your loved ones
would read,
“warning:
we have given your loved one the lifetime gift of
internalized
(and externalized, of course)
fatphobia.
they may discuss in
great detail
many new habits that we have given them,
and you will almost certainly wish they would
shut the fuck up
when they bring these habits up
at the dinner table.”

the only thing i can think
when you say calorie-counting this,
fasting that,
low-carb, sugar-free, “good” food, “bad” food, cheat days, goal weight, thin enough, attractive enough, just enough,
is

isn’t this
fucking exhausting?
isn’t it constant?
isn’t it all-consuming?
how could you possibly be happy?
when you reach whatever superficial goal you set, will it satisfy you?
will you be enough then?
will you ever feel like enough?

the trigger warning for you
would be in fine print on the back of your bible
and it would read,
“warning:
diet culture is the most socially accepted form of
disordered eating.”