04.01.01

Consider this an apology. Consider this my way of making amends for having a body. Yes, it’s true, I exist in three dimensions. Father, forgive me, for I have sinned.

I take up space. My body cannot be folded flat and slipped into a pocket. I have criminal curves that stretch and push against the narrow box I have been given to exist within. This is a world of right angles, and I am eternally, hopelessly round.

This is not about the size of my ass. This is not about my tits, my belly, my thighs. This is not about me.

This is about a cage I was born into, that I didn’t notice until my flesh was suddenly pressed up against iron bars in every direction. Cease and desist, the bars said. Please do not pass go. Please do not take up any more space.

Suddenly I was filled with a hunger greater than anything I have ever known, a hunger to grow, to expand, to take up entire rooms, houses, cities. This is wrong, the bars told me. This is disgusting, they said. You are not a real woman, they chanted. Women do not take up space.

I believed them. I did not feed my hunger. I shrank away into a pocket-sized woman. When I turned sideways, I could almost disappear. Good job, the bars said, approvingly. Lovely, they cooed. That’s more like it.

There was still the problem of my brain. It continued to grow, rounder, and bigger, and rounder still, until once again I was pressed up against iron bars, my wild mind taking up the space that my pocket-sized, two-dimensional body would not.

Proper women do not think, the bars said. Proper women do not overflow untidily out of their boxes, they said. Proper women do as they are told.

My pocket-sized body cringed in embarrassment for my improper head. It tried to disappear. But my head had grown too big by then. It retorted, in a most unladly-like voice, oh yeah? Well maybe I don’t want to be proper!

The bars shattered, leaving searing scars where they had pressed against my skin. I thought perhaps I had escaped.

But there are these days. The days when I find myself apologizing for the space I occupy, for the act of breathing, for my body’s repeated refusal to stay within the lines. The days I realize that those iron bars are in clothing stores, in magazines, on the television, and I can’t escape them.

I don’t try. Instead, I fold up my heart into a pocket-sized origami bird, and toss it up into the arms of the wind, where no bars will ever contain it.

***

xoxo,

moonbird

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