I worked in the garden and he sat on the fencepost, I could feel him sitting there without looking up. I knew he came with something to say, mostly because he was saying nothing. I knew that he was waiting for me to look up at him, I didn’t. I focused on the sun and how it warmed my skin. I focused on the smell of the lilacs that bloomed all over the property. I focused on the way that I felt with my hands and feet in the ground. Eventually, I looked up at him. He smiles with a crooked smile, a lopsided grin that let me know that he was playing with me. I smiled back, used the back of my hand to push the hair from my eyes. I looked back down at the tomatoes that I was planting knowing that the eye contact was enough of an acknowledgement that he would eventually spit it out.

“You know………. you can’t lose weight when you hate your body”

I didn’t look up. He knows it is a sensitive topic for me. I crawled along planting the tomatoes. I had recently gained a little weight and no matter what I did the weight wouldn’t come off.

“I know that” I said without looking at him.

“Do you” he asked from the fencepost.

“I mean, I should” I said back feeling unimpressed with myself. Unimpressed that I needed to be having this conversation with him. Unimpressed that I couldn’t see it for what it was before he called me out on it. Unimpressed that I found myself in a situation again where I didn’t love my body.

“You lost weight when you loved yourself and your body”

I knew that he was gone without looking however I looked up anyway. The fencepost was empty, much like the way that I felt when I realized that I was hating my body again.