“If you lost a little weight,
you’d be a knockout.”

​

A knockout?

​

I didn’t know what that meant.
I knew, with certainty,
I wasn’t one.

​

It’s first grade.

​

Still a bud
and already learning
there are parts of me
that should be cut away.

​

A little less of me,
I learned,
might make me more.

​

Most of my early memories
carry some version of this.

​

“You have a pretty face.”

​

If only.

​

If only I were thinner.
If only I were prettier.
If only there were
a little less of me.

​

The cuts changed
as I grew.

​

By nineteen,
I thought I knew.

​

Marriage.
A home.
Dogs.
Church.

​

I kept cutting,

pruning.

​

A want here.
A boundary there.

​

Whatever threatened
the life I called enough.

​

One hurt
on top of another.

​

A deeper cut.

​

Each one seeming
to prove the first one right.

​

Eventually
no one had to tell me
what needed cutting.

​

I knew where to put the shears.

​

Their voices,
now my own.

​

At forty-two,
I took the shears.

​

This time,
I cut away

the rules,

the fear,
the lives I kept trying
to make fit.

​

I kept going
until I found her—

​

the little girl
beneath all the if onlys.

​

I had spent years
cutting myself back.

​

She spent them
keeping something alive.

​

Together,

we planted wildly.

​

Dreams first.
Permission later.

​

We didn’t know
what would bloom.

​

For once,

we didn’t need to.