1
Dear Ana,
The truth is
I would never speak to a child
the way I speak to myself.
I would never tell a four year old that she is fat,
That no one will love her.

Ana,
Picture yourself as a four year old girl.

2
There is nothing empowering about lessening yourself.
You are a vanishing act. Your body, the magic hat,
pulling out nothing. Your body is a clothing wrack,
your body is my favorite sweater shrunk in the dryer.

3
Dear mothers of Hollywood,
mothers of the red carpet and the 10 pounds the camera adds,
how will your daughter ever learn to love her body
if she is forced to watch you wring out yours?
Will you tell her less is more less is more less I know
more less I know more or less how to love myself.

4
Hair loss is a side effect of bulimia.
If you are so hell-bent on losing your hair,
here are the scissors. Here is the razor.
Why don’t you shave it? Why don’t you
donate it? Why don’t you braid me a fucking scarf?

5
You are a beautiful martyr. You are a knuckle-kissing saint.
You are a mother bird and we are all your children
and we are all so hungry. We want to see a staircase
around your lungs. We want to hang ornaments
from your collarbone. We want nothing
to do with your softness.

6
They don’t show big girls in the magazines
like they are afraid to show men what childbirth looks like.
It is too real, it is too bloody.

7
Dear First World,
what a privilege it is to hate our bodies.

To suffocate in skin, or to shuck ourselves
from the inside out. We can afford to eat too much
or too little. No left overs, no left overs,
no I left over. Know that I left over,
know that I love what is left of me.

8
Dear Ana, when your loved ones
carry your coffin, will they doubt
there is a body in there?
Like an empty suitcase.
A silent instrument.

9
I too have pulled at my torso.
I too have imagined hemming my body.
Folding it in on itself-
I suck it in. I suck it in. I turn off the light
before I let him love me.

10
Ana, picture yourself as a little girl.
Tell her she is not good enough. Tell her
she is ugly. When she comes to you hungry,
do not feed her.

11
Your body is not a temple.
Your body is the house you grew up in.
How dare you try to burn it to the ground.
How dare you think you are anything but gorgeous.
You are bigger than this.
You are bigger
than this.

12
Dear Ana,
you are swallowing yourself.
Your voice is so small.