My Figure

Walking down
Magnolia, blooming eleven
years old with my two older
sisters who pinch the skin on
my lower back exclaiming,
“Already the ‘Rogers
backfat’.” I
was almost
proud. Post-pubescence,
burgeoning into womanliness, the artificial
apparatus magnifies this amorphous monstrosity—
my body—eliciting a frown and a solid
emptiness in my center. Take it on the
chin—crumpled, another abnormality—
and craft something flattering
like liquid glass slimmed out,
cooled to harden,
sculpted into a
trickling
hourglass;
fragile image.“After
all, a woman’s charm is fifty
percent illusion.”Saying the ‘F’ word
is fishing for dissent, pity, compliments.
It is more politically correct to utter, ‘rotund.’
Round abdomen, round face, round eyes, round
boobs. Despite my diminutive figure (we don’t say the
‘SH’ word, here), I’m Sex Barbies—Skipper version, but my
limbs aren’t bent and rigid. They’re languid, lovely. Motion and
emotion. A pretty visage is my disguise. I was made to adorn, though
an inclination for ornamentation
does not equate a
deficiency in my
design. I’m
more or less
beautiful,
but that’s
my sad
attempt at
modesty.
To one
this
body
belongs.