I am box-shaped.
I waddle when I walk.
When I sit down,
my sides
squirt out from my pants
and create a ridge.
The skin on the surface of that ridge
must aggravate the nerve endings,
because it can feel the metal
part of the school chair.
In class, I take my pencil,
lay it between the edge of the desk
and my stomach and measure
in a T-shape
the distance in between,
how many pencils of space
between my stomach and the desk.
For Mark, two at least,
For Diana, at least two and a half.
For me, less than one,
even when I suck it in,
even when I push my jacket into my body,
less than one pencil space.
Carlos, no pencil space at all,
gets stuck when he tries to stand up too fast.
Other kids say he’s been like that since first grade.
They leave him alone now,
like they don’t even see him anymore,
like he doesn’t exist,
but that seems worse.
In the mornings,
kids sit sideways in their desks.
Pick is talking to Abra,
and Noah is laughing at something
that Grace just told him,
moving his body freely up and down,
his legs crossed, comfortable;
I see the angles of his body
with space all around.
When Skye talks to me,
I wish so badly I could
sit sideways in my chair.
I want to turn around
and see her eyes.
She always smells like candy.
I turn as much as I can,
my stomach pressed against
the wood lip of the desk,
my neck aching.
I want this one simple thing
to open up more space
between my desk and my body,
to stop seeing
life in pencil lengths.