by Charly Cox
She’s beautiful
But the god I hate force fed my mouth
With words about my figure
That’s why tonight it’s gum for dinner
I say god
But the voice isn’t holy
It’s the voices of memories
Of boys who shuddered to hold me
Strange men in the street who scolded me
Inner thoughts who offered me
Biscuits when I was sad not hungry
That’s why tonight it’s gum for dinner
Perhaps I’ve got the wrong idea
Praying to someone who isn’t here
For more lithe limbs and straighter hair
Bowing solemnly to such unfair words
Because if he was real, he’d be a sinner
He couldn’t last on gum for dinner
He’d have no power in his bones
His voice would shout in shadowed tones
And pass out before he could complain
The confliction of this strength for weakness
Has always driven me insane.
trump
Tell me, sir
Explain it loud and clear
Shout your most direct
Explicit fears
Scream them until
The decibels reach parallel
To the clang and clatter in my heart
Until you can rage each syllable
So pointedly you can throw your voice like a sharpened dart
And throw it for me
Speak for me
Times those fears by ten
Then times them by one hundred
And one thousand and again
Keep multiplying what shakes you
Until it becomes so monstrous
So tangible and noxious
That it no longer feels like fear
It just feels constant
Familiar
Monotonous
Like you’ve spent your life rehearsing
For a nightmare
As the understudy
Never quite enough for the part
Because you don’t qualify as somebody
Like you’ve learnt every line
As though what you feel is fiction
And you’ll never get the lead as someone
Whose script is written with conviction
Tell me, sir
Explain it loud and clear
Explain it so loudly my unborn daughter can hear
Project your voice into the future
If you can impregnate me with these lost morals
You’re free to rape me just as quick
And then what happens if you conceive more than fear?
What happens if I don’t want that kid?
Your future is bubble-wrapped
And I’m held punishable for it.
Try and tell me that you’re scared
As you bang my head on the glass ceiling
And drag me by my hair
Through statements like
SHE ASKED FOR IT
I’m pretty sure I didn’t …
Pretty sure I’m pretty more
Than a pretty face to be ignored
Tell me, sir
Explain it loud and clear
Because I’m lost
Wandered down too many paths
With no roads for me safe enough to cross
Without carrying my keys like a weapon
Been employed in too many places
Where I’m a disposable body on a ladder to step on
Tell me, sir
Mr, why are your Mrs’
Missing out?
Why do you consider us so little?
Who was the man that taught you
To grow into this man so bitter
Dishing out
What I can and cannot be?
Who was the man that showed you a lesser being
And why was that lesser being me?
filters
My eyes a little brighter
My teeth a little whiter
My skin a little clearer
And my hair
…accidentally a little greener
The contrast of the exposure
Is not one that’s clearer
The definition of the portrait
Is one of a heavyweight
Photoshopper
VSCO-er
I feel pretty when I’m told I am
I feel petty when it’s as cold as
I’m a barefaced liar
#NoFilter filter
A scared-faced beauty in disguise
A normal looking human being
But my profile picture has you surprised
As though it’s an image I’d been dreaming
The resemblance is close
My jawline is still mine
And my nose is still my nose
But would I still be of anyone’s desire
If I wasn’t hidden behind Instagram’s required
Mask?
The mask of a fool
The mask of the twenty-first-century cruel world
Or the mask of a self-conscious tryna be cool girl
Does it matter?
I still sit and pixelate
Digitally deliberate, curl into an aesthetic looking ball
Until my anxiety is a candidate for Britain’s Next Top face of the intimidated
My idea of beauty was once so different
So why have I confined that wonder
Into an ugly 4x4 square of imprisonment?
That has parameters smaller than the size of my thighs and is duller than the natural gradient of my eyes
I sit back so often with a chest thudding sigh
Scrolling
Refreshing
Relentless tapping
All down to an art
And think
Since when did I ignore my own heart to hack at my own life?
And since when did I become an image to sell of a millennial with scraps of sanity as its price?
london pervs
I swear to god
I’ll swear louder than the tops
Of my stretched swollen lungs
I’ll scream ’til I’m blue
And tie knots in your slimy shallow tongues
I swear to god
It’s quite a simple thing to grasp
That if you shout at me in the street
Or brush your hand against my arse
If you simmer me down to a piece of meat
I won’t be the one falling to their knees
Put your whistles in your pockets
Force your eyes back in their sockets
Spin your heels and curve your tongues into a curl
I will only say this once so listen up:
You’ve picked the wrong girl.
women’s tea
I went into a health food store
To buy some spring roll skins
And found myself instead
In an aisle of loose leaf tea tins
Digestion, anxiety, whatever your ailment
They were stacked in dozens of varieties
And foreign flagrant flavours
This one box caught my eye
Barbie brash bold pink
It read ‘Women’s Tea’
And I was lost on what to think
Stuff the patriarchy!
Stuff your colour-denoted sexes!
When were leaves vulnerable to this malarkey!
I bet it’s even more expensive
So I marched with echoed stomps
And slammed it on the desk
Turns out some herbs are good for cramps
And some are good for men
So I pocketed my placards
And zipped my coat over my Pankhurst shirt
And thought before I spluttered statistics
I should have a cuppa first.
imposter
I have always thought
/>
That people have commented on
My beauty
Because of my female appearance
As though my gender was a given
For physical applause
But never did I realise
That it could be because they found me beautiful
And yet when it’s been suggested
That I’m not in proportion
I have felt unworthy
Of this gender at all
And panic unsure
In a male gaze
That tips me on a scale
Of which I always weigh too heavy
To know what’s true.
hunger
Weighted by the weight of me
Weightless when I quickly eat
Forgetting all the bits I see
In the bathroom, only me
At the table I transport
To somewhere that I can’t be caught
Ham-fisted with empty calories
Picking plates, pushed pieces
Straightened back, stretched out creases
Knife and fork, balanced crossed
Brain salivating into figures lost
What deliciousness it forces, fake
As the satiation is a masked empty
That is only weighted by the weight of me.
gift for a man
I’m scared that if things don’t change
If I don’t shout louder
I’ll be met with a future daughter
Who will feel a pressure on her worth to shrink shorter
And I’ll be responsible if I have to hear her say:
‘How can I be so foolish
to sit with marble ham thighs
A masculine tone
Dilated pupils and tar-stained bone
And think someone might wish
Upon each passionate gesture I make
I might be his to kiss?’
Fingers that bend all but the middle
Dirtied language and eyes of white
Stand to a halt as each stranger approaches her at night
And as she struggles to find the compliment
It’s their lurid advances that give her a twisted confidence
That no matter how tall she stands
She’ll only be worthy of love
If she kneels, plain and thin
As a gift for a man.
How will I make her feel something new
When I’ve spent so much time feeling that that might be true?
sobriety
This present day
Has no tonic to dilute it
Uncarbonated calm
Eyes wide awake
That stare down old habits
Searching out new ones
Somewhat disappointed
To find present day.
cellulite (sells you heavy)
There is a fold beneath the crease
That haunts me with trepidation
And despite what preparation
Goes into each breakfast
It seems there is an infiltration
This breeding nation
Of fat
That crawls and creeps between my legs
Regardless of what weight I shed
The bicycle motions I do in bed
Are relentless
Where is the redemption
For those who exercise?
My thighs
Jesus Christ the size
It should not be fair
Cellulite, sells you heavy
Cells from genes I was not ready to grow
Jeans that are unable to grow with me
They exhaust me from the source of me
They heckle me from each freckle on me
And if I could take a biological eraser
Remove these frustrating chubby placers
I thought I would
I tried to tell myself each dimple is a smile along my skin
A lightning bolt breaking from within
The happiness of a chicken nugget
Is a small white rocket
That bends to be a part of me
Pretends to be a piece of me
But nothing that small can be the defeat of me
And that’s why I stopped wishing them away
I can’t tell you how free it feels to prod them
And be okay
To look at them and be fine
To open up and say
My body stretched to make this space
And these tiny imperfections are mine.
fat
Please
I beg you
Don’t touch that
That handle that you want to grab
That protruding piece of mass
Please don’t touch that
Don’t remind me of my dinner
Then absolve your arms as though I am thinner
Please don’t touch that
Please don’t touch that and then pretend it isn’t there
Yet still give me an unapproving stare
When I reach for seconds
Please, I’m asking nicely
Don’t touch that even politely
Don’t laugh at all my icons
And say I could be her if my thighs were gone
If my legs were tight and long
Please don’t touch that
Don’t command my skin like you are proud
When publically you are loud
About how there’s too much
But somehow in bedroom whispers
Your language dissolves straight into touch
Please don’t touch that
If you can’t see it’s me
I have spent too many years
Stroking my own thigh to knee
To know what’s there
And if for a sober second
Deep within your heart’s compassion
You think you might have capacity
To hesitate my weight and then scream sexual passion
Please for the love of god don’t touch that
Don’t touch me at all
Because I spend too much time weighing myself
To wait to see that you’re such a fool
To touch me
And not see the pain that’s looking back
Don’t touch me when you know how I feel and you call that feeling fat
Please don’t touch that.
body part 2
He touches you. He is no one in particular in your recollection, he has become many faces. Faces that interchange within your memory upon recalling any which one of these stories you begin to tell your friends and then retreat. You say nothing. Your face grows depressed at the concept and with your same face you feel disgusting. As hands paw along your flesh you are so aware of all that you are. How that might be unattractive. How if it feels uncomfortable to you, how grotesque it must feel from the palms of another. Past experience has told you this anxiety is worthy. Past faces have furrowed eyebrows and then widened and pursed lips to disgruntle at the space within which you take up. You push it from your brain. Relax. Remember to relax. Remember that the reason why you have a disjointed relationship with your body is because you can’t relax. But you can’t. Popping candy synapses wet between your ears and fire off all manner of heart spasms and unease and short breaths and weighted defeat.
He asks you to say things, to do things.
You say them, you do them.
In the same instance that you choose not to remember his name, because he has had so many, you choose not to remember the list of bursting speech bubbles that blew from between your lips with syruped saliva, and even though they are old, they sound new, and even in your memory, you say them again.
Dutifully.
This, surely, is how you relax.
Listening, observing, serving. Taking action and control from someone more confident, more experienced. You let him touch you, your body shivers with an immoderate buzz of panic that he confuses f
or excitement, quietly disguising against your own will, relearning your own body. These are not mixed messages, this is the only language that you know. Quietly in inner turmoil. Nothing here is obvious or certain. It’s just uncomfortable. But that’s how it always is and how it’s always been and you are sure will always be and the reason why you feel so disconnected and afraid and ashamed of this experience is because all that he’s touching, all that he’s grabbing already distastefully is
Fat.
You feel every inch of yourself squirm. Suddenly everything is obvious and everything is certain.
Everything is wrong.
You are stuck in the flash of your own realisation, hands reaching for duvet, fingers being bent back upon themselves with his.
His pace quickens and you assume a noise to the action, you heard it once in a film your friend’s older brother showed you, a stale but stuck reference point, so you echo it. Echo, echo, echo.
You find yourself here time and time again, telling yourself that you’re putting yourself through exposure therapy, telling yourself you deserve it, telling yourself this is good, telling yourself this is normal, this is normal, you have put yourself here, you have been complicit this far, ignore why, ignore your discomfort, ignore the fact you realised this on the journey here and you’ve since tried to leave and you’ve asked to leave, you’ve asked politely and then you’ve said bluntly and then you’ve booked a cab and then it’s been cancelled, but your brain is so heavy with hate and self-doubt and confusion that you’ve forgotten you’ve said those things. You’ve forgotten he’s noticed, you’ve forgotten he’s said no to your no, you’ve forgotten he’s played into your weakness. You’ve forgotten who you are. So you listen to his rhetoric and tell yourself that your body will be yours to own once someone has put a price on it that you’re willing to buy it back for. But you never seem to. You never want to buy it back because it is offered in such unrecognisable packaging, that you hope the last transaction means it’s yours no longer.
‘Please, please, just take me. Take it all from me and let me no longer be responsible.’
Your responsibility feels excruciating and complicated and exhausted.
You had tried so many times to free your body but now it’s all so enmeshed you’re lost for how.
You’re lost. You’re tired. You’re vulnerable. Unknowingly, because of those things, your brain is whimpering on behalf of your body:
‘Please, please, just take me. Take it all from me and let me no longer be responsible.’
Until one day a man does, in a way that you feel is absolute, that feels so concrete, he takes it in such a way that it is no longer yours to bargain with. He stamps on it. You have been here before but until this moment you don’t realise the danger. He touches your fat body and tells you what it is, he drags it, tells you he’s caressing, and no matter how many times you question it in your head, question it aloud, say you are tired, say you are asleep, actually fall asleep, dream vivid nightmares prematurely, wake up and feel his breath inhale your protests, he hands back half the worth that’s half the worth of what you were afraid of that you owned. Nobody knows, you never mention it. Just him. Just you. In retrospect, just all of you. Just a night where you entered a room feeling fat and left feeling much heavier. You wonder for months, ‘Would this have happened if I was skinny and confident and could just say no?’ And one day you hope, it’s still not yet, you can turn around and see that you’d always said no, and one day you’ll see that no rolls or cellulite can count as witnesses, not because it wasn’t true, but because they weren’t there.
