Skinny Girls Don't Float

for my VONA sisters who feel like drowning

(confessions of a former Skinny Girl)

 Skinny girls don’t float. I know. I was once a skinny girl. It’s just that there’s nothing there to hold the bones up, protect them from the current. Skinny girls sink, legs kicking, mouth open, swallowing ocean, hair going all crazy. Skinny butt just dragging you down like a stone. Believe me. I remember. But not-skinny-girls, girls like us, girls with breasts and hips and full moon bellies, we are buoyant. We lie back, stretch two arms up above our heads, and let our feet rise from the bottom up. We hold our bodies to the sun and waves washing over us, cool us down. Our tummies, loaves of whole wheat bread browning, balloon above the ocean tide, soft and airy and we are feeling it. Like stars fallen from the sky we are the shimmer in the ocean. We go with the flow, still as water lilies. Fragrant too. We relax, trusting the sea as it carries us like treasures north and south and east and west, spinning us like the easy needle of a compass. We surrender to the gentle tide while skinny girls with lean dense muscles, kick to stay afloat. Their arms reach at nothing. Grasp for something to hold onto – an inflatable donut, the side of a boat, a boy. But we not-so-skinny-girls, we don’t need anything to hold us up. We’ve got ourselves, we’ve got our bodies. We float, faces up and smiling, like an offering to God.