To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.
Please enjoy today’s selection: “Before I Gained All This Weight” by Molly Fisk, which appears in Verse on the Vine Anthology:
Before I Gained All This Weight
I was so self-conscious I could barely
walk into town for fear people
would stare. I thought I was hideous,
unlovable. Now I want to shake
that poor girl, even though it wasn’t
her fault, so afraid to be human —
rattle her cage of good grades, selftanning
lotion and green eye-liner,
fast-acting depilatory cream, tell her
to smile for God’s sake and kiss
the next boy she sees, life is shorter
than anyone imagines. Silver planes
plummet from clean skies, cancer gnaws
the marrow of even younger bones
than yours, wake up! There’s still time!
Everything around you is unbelievably
beautiful.
