A Poem For Those Who Have Been Called ‘Fat’

I was young when people began calling me
fat. My nickname resembles an animal, a pig.
It was playful, I did not get it. I was a kid. I did not mind.
I grew up tall, and they still call me that.
Every single day, they remind me of how my body
is wrong, is ugly, is fat. I grew old angry at myself.
And it did not go.
The weight was not only on my arms, or on my thighs,
or on my stomach, or on my muffin top, it was inside me.
It began to become harder to walk, or to go out,
or to buy pretty dresses and clothes, or talk to people,
not because I was struggling to move, but
the weight has taken my strength to look up
and see strangers’ gaze at me, and sometimes
they don’t even bother looking.
Because I was ugly.
Because I was fat.
I did not want to go out, or take pictures.
I was so scared to look at myself, and the mirror
cuts me deep even if it isn’t broken.
Every time I eat, I feel like I am murdering
the streak that I had stopped eating. Every bite tastes like
a sin from the people watching my every move
as if I was some kind of suspect. Little did they know,
I was the one being murdered, with they’re words,
night after night, I weep through my sheets
thinking how many times do I have to kill myself,
to be considered beautiful? I ask myself.
I cry even harder, seeing old pictures of the kid I was.
I cried not because I was disgusted how fat I was,
but how your words had been engraved in my little head,
I was not even fat.
I was normal, whatever that meant. But I know I was not heavy.
But no memories do I have of that, that little scarred kid
who was told she was fat.
Well, here I am now, heavy-weight,
heavy-hearted.