mid + most, a pair
Mid.
Imagine living your life
dead center.
Average across the board.
Average American woman:
height — five five,
shoe — eight and a half,
weight —
(it doesn’t matter, okay?)
something to do with
two-something.
Size fourteen.
Face five out of ten.
Midway point on the scale —
how poetic.
Mid.
It reminds me of 2022,
Dominican Republic,
sun melting the back of my neck.
I walk past a taxi stand,
minding my business,
and he says —
in Spanish —
“I’d give you a ride for free.”
I look around —
no one else there.
It’s me.
The free ride.
The punchline.
Mid,
but somehow still a target.
Mid,
but somehow still too much.
In that moment
I wish I could grow knives
from my knuckles
like Wolverine,
slice the smirk right off his face.
But I don’t.
Because DR.
Because safety.
Because it’s not worth
dying for a comeback line.
So I walk away,
Arthur fists at my sides,
pretending I didn’t hear him,
pretending it doesn’t stick
like gum on my brain.
To be or not to be —
yeah, Shakespeare knew.
I performed that speech once
in twelfth grade,
almost threw up on stage.
Took a C-minus.
Another mid.
Funny how the world
keeps grading me
on a curve
it refuses to show.
Average.
Mid.
Fat.
Woman.
American.
They say “mid” like it’s neutral,
but it’s always a warning —
be smaller,
be thinner,
be less.
I’ve seen this before —
the same mirrors,
the same hunger
dressed up as self-improvement.
MOST.
​
My body has always been
the highlight of conversation.
​
Growing up,
it walked into rooms before I did.
People met it
before they met me.
​
Even when I was young,
I was chubbier than my peers.
When your body is the first thing
everyone notices —
how do you ever learn
to notice it kindly yourself?
​
Sometimes I look at myself
and feel in limbo —
inside it,
yet disconnected.
​
I resent my body for being,
but I protect it too.
It has hurt me,
but it has also carried me through.
​
When I’m dolled up,
I can almost like what I see
for a moment.
​
Growing up,
I received no romantic attention.
And while that’s okay,
it left me lost
when love arrived.
​
Now,
as an adult,
finding partners isn’t the hard part —
it’s being seen.
​
Because my body
is still the headline,
the secret,
the after-hours confession.
​
Never the open daylight.
Never the hand held in public.
​
Growing up fat
means learning the language
of “ew no”
and “I want you, but in private.”
The guilty-pleasure paradox.
​
It made me avoidant.
It made me a people pleaser.
​
Everyone wants to “fix it” —
shrink it, change it, hide it,
as if my body’s the problem,
and not the world’s gaze.
​
They call it too much,
but maybe I’m just full.
​
Of breath,
of pulse,
of everything I was told to lose.
​
Maybe that’s what it means
to be MOST.
