1.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says ‘No, you are beautiful.’
I wonder why I cannot be both.
He kisses me
hard.

2.
My college theater professor once told me
that despite my talent,
I would never be cast as a romantic lead.
We do plays that involve singing animals
and children with the ability to fly,
but apparently no one
has enough willing suspension of disbelief
to go with anyone loving a fat girl.
I daydream regularly
about fucking my boyfriend vigorously on his front lawn.

3.
On the mornings I do not feel pretty,
while he is still asleep,
I sit on the floor and check the pockets of his skinny jeans for motive,
for a punchline,
for other girls’ phone numbers.

4.
When we hold hands in public,
I wonder if he notices the looks —
like he is handling a parade balloon on a crowded sidewalk;
if he notices that my hands are now made of rope.

5.
Dear Cosmo: Fuck you.
I will not take sex tips from you
on how to please a man you think I do not deserve.

6.
He tells me he loves me with the lights on.

7.
I can cup his hip bone in my hand,
feel his ribs without pressing very hard at all.
He does not believe me when I tell him he is beautiful.
Sometimes I fear the day he does will be the day he leaves.

8.
The cute hipster girl at the coffee shop
assumes we are just friends
and flirts over the counter.
I spend the next two weeks
mentally replacing myself with her
in all of our photographs.
When I admit this to him
we spend the evening taking new photos together.
He will not let me delete a single one of them.

9.
The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire.
Fucking me does not require an asterisk.
Loving me is not a fetish.
Finding me beautiful is not a novelty.
I am not a fucking novelty.

10.
I say, ‘I am fat.’
He says, ‘No. You are so much more’,
and kisses me
hard.

You asked me if I wanted to get drunk and stay the night, and I said yes, and we ending up just lying there in bed, my head resting on your chest, thinking about all the parties we didn’t go to or the roads we didn’t turn down or the words we never said because we thought they sounded too foolish or romantic or silly. And eventually we came to the conclusion that there’s always gonna be the nights when we break down in the car by ourselves listening to The Smiths in a dark, empty parking lot, or the days when even opening our eyes requires more effort than dragging someone out of a burning building.

But then your hand drifted down and it rested over my heart, and we sat there like that for a while, smoking, the city outside just breathing and breathing, over and over again, all the lights out there symbolizing college girls pinching their skin in the mirror or two elderly people falling in love for what feels like the millionth time. The awkward first dates at coffee shops and the librarians who go home and watch porn for two hours every night. You told me all these extraordinary things were happening every day and that sometimes it didn’t matter what road we didn’t take or the things we never said because somewhere out there, there was another couple lying in a shabby little bed with only a few covers, touching each others’ skin and trying to feel alright again when everything was crashing down on them.