Fatso

On the eighth grade beach outing
I wore a black one-piece, size 14 plus,
but didn’t take off my shirt.
While the other kids dodged the surf
I read. I was always reading;
it was my means of
getting through life.
In the evenings my mother
would come into my room without knocking
and nag me to put down the book.
“You’ll ruin your eyes,” she kept saying.
At last I went on a diet
and lost thirty pounds in six months.
Then I entered high school
and made new friends
to talk about books and boys with
and watched TV in the evenings
curled up on the couch with my mother,
who never again
voiced any concern for my eyes.