“Didn’t I tell you about the time my mom

thought I had an eating disorder?”
you say, offhand, from the sink.
You are washing the dishes,
and I lock my eyes on your face,
doing my best not to scan you,
a deep-seated instinct,
but—damn—
now I’ve taken too long to say something 
and you’re avoiding my gaze.
So I let the revelation settle in my gut,
one more move in this game of chicken
where we pretend we do not worry
and we do not want
to be worried about.
 
Take last night.
You cracked a joke and I flinched
instead of laughing like I was supposed to.
But I wouldn’t have let you apologize,
and you knew that,
so you passed me a sleeping pill
and offered to buy me some melatonin
and turned on the air conditioning.
And this morning I laughed,
lied
and said I slept
to reassure you that it was okay.
It wasn’t,
I mean, I wasn’t,
but the whole world is a minefield 
and we can’t tiptoe around it all.
We’ve both spent too many years trying.
 
Once, we went to a bar,
and I helped you with a glowstick bracelet,
and you said, “Wait,
how did you get yours on?”
and my fingers started tingling
and I mumbled, “Slid it on over my hand”
and you said, “God, I hate skinny people”
and I knew it was coming
but I still thought about how
she used to poke me in the locker room
and say I looked so good
she couldn’t keep her hands off
and I looked so good
it made her hate herself
in the same breath.
I just wanted to change my clothes.
But I weigh maybe 115 pounds,
and I do have skinny privilege,
so I didn’t call you out.
Just waited until you couldn’t hear,
then sobbed into my pillow
because I was so sick
of my body needing to come
with a trigger warning.
 
The other day I was contemplating 
putting on shorts and texted you,
“I wish I was Violet Incredible”.
A sentiment you share,
although for a different reason,
since you hate the scale
because the number is too high
and you want to feel lovable
and I hate the scale
because the number is there at all
and I don’t want to be sometimes.
But still, you understand the appeal
of going unseen,
shrinking,
and that’s alarming, but
it’s also comforting.
 
Because you’ve been there, you notice
when I’m too anxious to eat
and find something easy on my stomach.
Casually, so you won’t seem worried,
since you don’t want me to make myself
smaller than I am
and disappear 
altogether.
And because I’ve been there,
I forced the words down
while you were standing at the sink,
just drove to work.
But from the parking lot,
I sent you an Instagram meme
about being hot and unstable
(like climate change),
my way of reminding you
that you’re beautiful AND
that you can be honest.
So maybe we’re tiptoeing after all,
but at least it’s afterwards 
instead of before.
At least it lets us
drop the lore while washing the dishes,
and for two girls who always pretended
they were okay,
it’s such a relief to be allowed 
to take up so much space
and not even have to apologize for it.