American Thighs

staring and comparing

exact length and width

my whole life

or at least since I started 

playing soccer at age seven

such judgement and importance 

placed on the shape of sweet 

pale skin peeking out from under 

shorts, as we ran around soggy 

Seattle fields like baby antelopes 

while parents waited on sidelines 

with orange smiles in their hands

mine were never thin enough

the popular girls' were perfect

symbol of all that type of girl
had that I never would

impossible to ever be skinny or
pretty enough to be truly good

strange how they would seem

to appear larger or smaller depending

on what type of pants one wore

I didn’t wear jeans for years, tried ankle-length
dark skirts, as a teenager, to hide them

longed for a diet that would work

even my burgeoning feminism couldn’t save me

then I made a friend in college whose different

fixation also came from her sport: the shape
of torsos from beach volleyball courts

tanned bodies supple as seals
in the golden California sun

this was a revelation to me! because 

I never thought that not everyone

else was looking at, and mercilessly 

judging the same female body part

and perhaps it didn't matter as much as
I thought, maybe it wasn't the entire measure
of my worth, perhaps there was another way to
be good, and break out of that routine body 

dysmorphia that we simply call American 

"girlhood"

it's taken years but now, how I love them for their 
strength & longevity, for they’ve carried me
across so many finish lines, they've
literally never let me down

and that turns out to be all I ever needed
from them, all they ever really meant
they’ve carried me, they've carried me,
with such love, they carry me still