Dear Body,

Have you ever wondered when I would let you go? When I would let you simply sit in the field, fall backward, and match your shadow? If I lie down and outline myself with chalk, would you let me make you thinner? Last week, I read about how girls from families with higher academic achievement are at greater risk for anorexia. I don’t remember when I started hating food.

Body, do you remember when I started high school a year earlier than I was supposed to? How they let me skip eighth grade because I was academically advanced? I remember walking into the large building and not knowing anyone. I remember saying hello to the lamppost, to the hooded doors. I’ve never forgiven the birds that flew me to the door and left.

That year, when no one was looking, I stopped eating. That year, all food was undergrowth, something to hide from and hate. That year, food stalked me like the headlamps of a search party.

That was the year I began spending lunches in the library. I waited for my stomach to clench. I waited for you to forgive me. But you never did. This morning, I weighed myself and the numbers were ruinous again. The numbers that never seem low enough. I am at your mercy. At the mercy of your praise that never comes. I want you to be shaped like a teardrop, not a knife.

I read somewhere that eating disorders are about control. I read somewhere that victims of bullying are at increased risk of symptoms of anorexia and bulimia.

You look like you’ve gained weight, Father sometimes said to my sister when he still made sense. Father never said that to me. My own body was thinner, taller, more precise, and weighed one hundred forty-two years. I had fed it hawthorn berries and talons. Occasionally the talons punctured my stomach. Everything leaked out but desire.

I remember Mother often going on diets. One year, it was Shaklee’s chocolate shake diet. Cardboard cans of brown powder lined the shelves. Another year, the brown rice diet, something she had learned from a Chinese family in California, who also told her to chew twenty times per bite. Another year, it was the red rice diet. Back to the brown rice diet. Then red. Still, Mother was slightly heavier and rounder than her other thinner, smaller Chinese friends.

At Mother’s funeral, a bony Chinese man said, Your mother was always a bit chubby. I was always worried about her health. As if her weight had caused her lungs to fail. He didn’t mean any harm, just as Father never meant any harm. But harm is rarely about intention. I remember all the times aunties would say to me, You’ve lost weight. Or, You’ve gained weight. Stand up so we can see you better.

A month before Mother died, she was so frail. She had lost all the weight of seventy-four years. I don’t think she was finally happy. She looked small and beautiful in a baggy old dress with blue flowers that she could finally fit into. I was secretly happy that she would never have to worry about her body again. That the weight of caring for Father was gone, that the weight of her countries was gone, that she was finally the weight of light.