identity

Following a supremely enriching conversation with une blogmate, I find find myself (still) in the kitchen, chopping ingredients to add to my forbidden rice salad--red pepper, green onion, edamame, cilantro tossed with sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, low sodium soy because I'm out of tamari--and the sun is coming through the back windows, spring sun, the real thing, warm enough that the snow in the backyard has melted into a mudpit that has been tracked all over my house by daisy but I don't care because I'm cooking, in my kitchen, food that is nourishing, healthy, whole.

This is, I will say it once again but certainly not for the last time, my one and only body.

And if that means i have to accept that it will always be a struggle, that divorce doesn't exist for people like me who just want to leave food behind, ignore it completely, act like it never lived because I come to food not just to cram it down my foodhole--though my conscious eating moments must multiply-- but to revel in its very existence, and to rejoice in the creative spirit that flows from me when I'm relaxed and in the kitchen, making do with whatever I can find in the fridge...I come to food with reverance, and thankfulness, and I never want my quest for apparent thin perfection to rob me of it to be something I love to do.

And I use it for comfort, solace, celebration, relaxation...

So, on with the rewiring.

What do I get out of sabatoging weight loss and healthy eating. Statement,
not a question. Rhetorical, even.

I don't suspect there is one answer, or even a host of answers. I speak it plainly. What do I get from eating too much.

To the mind leaps comfort.
There is no comfort in food.
___________

While chopping, I mull over the conversation with stine...considering the toxic hot implications of peanut butter spread on an english muffin, have I been an incinerator for years?
___________

I get out what I put in. Fullness. Familiarity. Sitting in front of the television, post-school, a cellophane-wrapped package of grapes in my lap. One by one. Zoom a zoom zoom. No one home but me. The grapes don't do it, quite. But they are there, cold, and I finish the pound, easily. And move to the kitchen to seek out more. More. Of what I'm yearning for.

This is what I know,
this weight of the ages,
hanging from the bone.
Years and years later,
I attempt the rewiring,
seek out those who know
this prison like I do,
the small window, the drafts.
Reflections. Learning to see anew.
Yearning to be like a slough of yous.
First you bite, then you chew.
Like walking for the first time
One step, wobble, one step.
And there, beyond all hunger
beyond third helpings
and empty pop-tart boxes under the bed
unbelievably (for how often I have fallen)
arms outstretched
_______________

If I'm fat, I don't have to accept that I'm beautiful.
If I'm beautiful, I can't stop the gaze.
It's not just about mass; it's about power.
Certain.
Constant.
Mine.