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.
