On 18th street,
I run with my egg-yolk fate
gasping for breath.
On the nth shop-
they disparage my body
yelling how a designer blouse won’t fit.
With shoulders bent with humiliation, I curse myself.
“How is she even getting married?” they chortle
with an evil eye.
For a big body like mine has sinned to exist.
My body is a vessel of drowning symmetry,
thighs– thunder on the vices.
Belly– a battlefield.
And stretch marks are the border roads– jagged.
The vagabonds rest on my body, for it has
only known how to love.
My body is more than how they
scan me in front of the crowd.
I tell Ma how the shame started at home,
how I could never stand up and scream at them
every time they mocked me by saying
you possess a body as big as property.
I got tired of the cosmetics to brighten my skin.
I mumble curses for this capitalist zeitgeist.
For it feeds you how skin so brown
and a body so mammoth is unworthy;
it asks you to drown yourself in the tub of products
while you loathe your entire existence.
A brown fat girl can only be the side role;
a side of crumpled abuses;
by the side of a person who has
checked the boxes of being worthy.
This vicious loop never ceases.
We are made fun of by the wedding planners
who tells us how we only deserve to be the stone columns at the grand entrance.
And yet an(other) tragedies keep heeding.
But what they fail to understand is
that their extra vegan diet or a suitcase of cosmetics
and their taunts on us makes us feel
like accepting ourselves is profanity.
While we place the bricks of love slowly,
building at our pace; they smash
our desires to be loved on the gravel.
They call it a big fat wedding;
but they hurl abuses at you if you
are the fat one who is getting hitched.
They measure every corner of you with the weighing scale
and eat you up
while you look for a morsel of affection in this desert.
It is a long fight, you see.
While I shrink myself at the edge of my room,
for tomorrow I have a vast day to attend.
Prasangana Paul pursuing International Relations from Jadavpur University loves to create art and believes to rattle the bones of the vices from her words.
Featured image:Free-Photos/Pixabay