Fifteen Minute Ficlet
Here it is. Go check out the LJ. It's awesome.
Thighs. By Jamsel.
I spent most of my childhood hating what I was: blonde hair, tomboy, nicely rounded tummy and thighs that stuck together. I remember so many summer afternoons, running, sweat gathering in the conclaves of my thighs and sliding down the edges, making them slap and slide against one another as I ran through the forest, trying to hide from myself. I would run, feet sinking into the compressed pine needles and compost that give a forest floor character. Jumping over thick gnarled roots and ducking under branches I would run and run until my chest heaved and my back ached. I would run until I was sobbing with effort, tears streaking down my face and mingling with the sweat so when I tried to catch them with my tongue I could not tell the difference. I guess, at the time it didn’t really matter.
For two years I loved being skinny, loving the bracing hunger pains that held the sides of my stomach together, swallowing pieces of rice whole to fill up my stomach faster, pushing candy bars at overweight people across from me at the counter and castling sly glances at the boy working next to me. The older boy. The be-all and end-all of those two summers; those two skinny summers. The summers spent wearing bright red, size eight capri pants with tight black tank tops and sunglasses, hair gleaming in the sun, effortlessly floating in my wake.
Then cancer happened.
Summers spent in the comfort of my den, summers spent aiding my mother in her own battle and feeling useless all of the time.
One year later my thighs were back together, greeting one another like old friends, companionably rubbing up against one another like two horny teenagers in a broom closet. That supreme, odious hatred I used to have for myself returned. So I ran and I didn’t come up for air for a long time.
I don’t know where I am now, somewhere in limbo, moving on from stuck together thighs, somewhere between that first (and only) boyfriend who called me beautiful everyday (I believed it) while trying to get a hand job in the backseat of his mother’s suburban, to the semi-intelligent, semi-attractive, semi-talented university student with absolutely no direction. And thighs that still stick together.
Thighs. By Jamsel.
I spent most of my childhood hating what I was: blonde hair, tomboy, nicely rounded tummy and thighs that stuck together. I remember so many summer afternoons, running, sweat gathering in the conclaves of my thighs and sliding down the edges, making them slap and slide against one another as I ran through the forest, trying to hide from myself. I would run, feet sinking into the compressed pine needles and compost that give a forest floor character. Jumping over thick gnarled roots and ducking under branches I would run and run until my chest heaved and my back ached. I would run until I was sobbing with effort, tears streaking down my face and mingling with the sweat so when I tried to catch them with my tongue I could not tell the difference. I guess, at the time it didn’t really matter.
For two years I loved being skinny, loving the bracing hunger pains that held the sides of my stomach together, swallowing pieces of rice whole to fill up my stomach faster, pushing candy bars at overweight people across from me at the counter and castling sly glances at the boy working next to me. The older boy. The be-all and end-all of those two summers; those two skinny summers. The summers spent wearing bright red, size eight capri pants with tight black tank tops and sunglasses, hair gleaming in the sun, effortlessly floating in my wake.
Then cancer happened.
Summers spent in the comfort of my den, summers spent aiding my mother in her own battle and feeling useless all of the time.
One year later my thighs were back together, greeting one another like old friends, companionably rubbing up against one another like two horny teenagers in a broom closet. That supreme, odious hatred I used to have for myself returned. So I ran and I didn’t come up for air for a long time.
I don’t know where I am now, somewhere in limbo, moving on from stuck together thighs, somewhere between that first (and only) boyfriend who called me beautiful everyday (I believed it) while trying to get a hand job in the backseat of his mother’s suburban, to the semi-intelligent, semi-attractive, semi-talented university student with absolutely no direction. And thighs that still stick together.