Big Fat “F”

There is someone who contaminates my self-worth, infecting it like HIV.

Tearing me apart, to her, is as easy as ripping a sheet of paper in two.

First, she pops like bubbles times in my memory where I felt pretty.

I dare not remember intimate moments with my husband.

I cringe at the thought that what she is showing me now, he saw.

I am bare and vulnerable, and she takes advantage.

She lectures me “You forgot again, didn’t you?”

Exposing me with her eyes, she marks each flaw wrong like an English teacher with a red pen,

Thighs that are bumpy…X,

two toned and hideous…XX,

A stomach that sags…XXX,

“Don’t bend”, she grunts, “it makes it worse”…

I am bullied to listen, as she scrutinizes my blemishes’ bad grammar…

Stretch marks, like shattered glass on pristine porcelain,

If it were a coffee cup or vase, it would surely be thrown out with the garbage,

But it can’t because it is stuck, a part of me.

Examining me from head to toe, she grades me a big fat “F”.

I hang my head, looking no longer into that mirror where she stands.

I take my marked up paper of a body and go back to the back of the class,

I take a solemn oath never to raise my hand again.