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Author notes: This poem originally appeared on a wonderful compilation from Black Coffee Creative called World of Women, Volume III, one of a few curations honoring the unique experiences of women and femmes.

I was made with shapes

but crossed them out

with tallies screaming,

Mother Nature, remake me:

Maybe not less woman, but please,

less person,

So we flattened into a double zero,

low-rise,

and I drew myself new with lettuce and vinegar

until the church ladies whispered.

A strict diet of dysphoria, yes,

but I still don’t know whether it was for

thinness or some gender in absentia,

left trainless in some faraway station.

...

But I don’t care:

I am reinvention!

So I drew myself

a line — nine and a seven

angled over the scale,

97, slouching into oblivion:

Took a mallet to the tumorous hips

Mom said made me woman.

She said she’d take me to a clinic

if I skipped another meal.

I’d give anything to believe it:

because Mother I love you,

but if you meant that you should have

committed me right then.

...

I’ll be my own mom:

Enough of denying myself:

I checked myself in and

I opened my mouth and ate -

Every mouth, and ate,

bereft of nothing.

Mother, I made a fetus, nameless,

from ellipses: witness

my new dimensions!

Subcutaneous ovoids

whorl over me en masse –

& multiply for your viewing pleasure.

I swole twice my original size

and they hated it,

said I was unrecognizable,

because I learned how

Woman looks on me:

a magnolia unfurling

like my real name:

a woman, if only for

how I consume.

A woman, too, for how

it wears on the body

and everyone watches.

...

Now we go shopping

And she tells me which dresses

are flattering, also, where I overflow:

“You didn’t get those from me.”

I nod, remembering I grew them.

Mom I love you but maybe look at what we’ve done

in this act of co-creation, we've made of me a spectacle

shedding a too-small dress

on an outlet-mall floor...

and I’m reminded of how orbular

a double zero

looks on paper and wonder too

at the irony of this

surrender:

How orthorexia feels as

strict like it sounds.

...

I share the politics of starving

but she’s still proud of how I’ve morphed again,

drawing my circles more taut with tirzepatide.

It’s the artist that they look at:

they squeeze me into whalebone

and gawk at the specimen under the syringe.

Now I insist: I'll be the subject

and sit for my own portrait: Mother, nature,

take from me the sickness, the tightening strings!

Let me marvel at how I change shapes with every iteration. © Maggie McCombs 2025