Broad shouldered,
thick-waisted and stocky –
my bones thick, heavy
as the smell of sweaty socks –
I decided since I’d never be skinny,
I would at least be strong.

But for a girl fed
on fairytale princesses,
bred on the slight and wilting
heroines’ plight,
that tremendous need
to feel tiny persisted –

led me to places
like my father’s 20-foot
scaffold in the backyard,
or airplanes swaddled in cirrus,
the world stretched to nothing
beyond their steely wings.

Once I found myself seated
atop a Brooklyn building,
legs dangling over the edge
of the rooftop – six stories closer
to the stars – looking skyward
and earthward

and inward;
imagined myself a speck,
small and insignificant
as any other
in the blue-black bounty
of that summer night.

Lauren K. Alleyne hails from the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing, and a minor in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, at Cornell University. She is amused by how closely campus resembles Hogwarts and is on a mission to conjure up better weather for the upstate NY area.