Marshmallow

haven't properly breathed

since I was

very small

a wee lad

free of

wheezing and labor

filling lungs like buckets

and when hormones

coursed

and I was

unable to fill little else

unable to fill out

when I

stayed wee

everyone let me know it

a person who'd never

say the word fat

to a double chin

would toss

skinny

thin

rail

around liberally

with

snarky thoughtlessness

don't you eat kid?

it made me feel

obese

oddly

this constant summing up of me

with guessed lowball figures

made me feel huge

because if I packed on pounds

if I let an ounce bounce

I thereby shed identity

I learned to suck it in

all of this nothing much

stuck between a rock

and a soft place

hyperconscious of every move

afraid to turn sideways

and disappear

yet in baggy athletics

no tummy

but tucked and rigid concave

ribs a cage

respiration rehearsed into

a girdle

shallow breaths and shallowness

cells operating on

limited nourishment

of air

of all else

and it turns out

hormones are irrelevant

you gotta breathe

with fullness

at depth

abdomen and chest both

you gotta rise

you gotta fall

all of you

every cell oxygenated

to be much of a man