Brandy

The trick was going slow

And watching Pete’s hands

As he firmly chunked iceberg

Into bits of salad she’d reluctantly

Eat later. This was the kind of thing

They all liked, talking about their mothers

Or their maids forcing them to eat their

Greens once upon a time. And Brandy

Went to a faraway nowhere place

Where something even remotely close

Would have happened like that.

But her stomach fought her convoluted

Notions of “the perfect life,” and she

Had to blink through a hungry desire

For ramen and Kool-Aid.

Jean moved into the kitchen, floated

In her small, nymph-like way,

And suddenly the hunger became

A longing to be longer limbed and lithe,

To be anything but the thick-ankled girl-woman

Attempting to butcher lettuce next to a man

Who smelled like an expense she couldn’t afford.

“You look fun,” Jean said in her sincere way

That made Brandy feel like a Thanksgiving blimp.

“Thank–” was all that made its way out into the ether

Because Jean had sharply changed course, her eye

On Pete who had moved on to the dressing.

Brandy watched them, like characters in a movie

She was only recently permitted to watch,

And for all the discomfort she felt as their eyes

Sized each other, and their hands played close

To the cutting board, she forced herself to know

And understand what she wasn’t, what she never

Would be as her heart-felt punishment for living.