[Read as performance]

Somebody has written HATE on the mirrors (in shock)
Somebody has written HATE on the mirrors (in mild realisation)

And I’ve been carrying the reflection on me ever since

I’m always Half dizzy
Because my breath is sucked in
and flesh with it
And my words too

Eyes are half open
I’m Turned Half deaf
From all the words of half hate half advice
Words that I’ve never asked for

Half walking, I’ve been stuck
wearing the disguise
The world asks for

Half alive by the time the day ends
And it's okay because nighttime is forgiving

Half staggering I get up the stairs
Only half the balance as the stupor now takes over

And as the door closes
And the held breath finally leaves me

A sharp half inhale

And letting go

And falling
Unbuttoning
Uncovering

Forgetting the unforgiving

And caressing

Spilling over and swaying~ back on my feet
No correct way of movement
No harsh mocking gaze

In the little pocket of nighttime
I am fully awake

I’ve allowed myself a whole mirror
A whole breath
And a whole stage
A whole smattering of makeup

The book’s most glorious page

In the spell of nothingness and no onlookers
The kind and caring nighttime

I’ve allowed myself allowed a whole dance
A whole lot of movement and absolutely no bounds

So

For the audience of nobody
For the moonlight
And in the shivering candlelight
I perform a dazed twirl

Like a top that’s about to stop but doesn’t

For now

Stopping to breathe
I fill up the room

From corner to corner

THE WHOLE LOT.



___________________________________________________________




“Am I fatter than that lady?” my mother asks me every time we pass by any large woman at the mall, her eyes begging me to answer in the negative. Hence, I never pass by a fat person without immediately looking at myself in the nearest available reflective surface.

Growing up a fat girl is not the best state of being. The perception of the body is formless at best. Sexless. Alien.

To be seen as a woman, to be looked at without the cringing eyes, to be seen for more than the spilling flesh, one is expected to fit in the ‘ideal’ frame of bodies or at least expected to exist constantly ashamed and hiding from sight the supposed ‘excess’.

Expected to not retort to filthy eyes and words that break the soul bone by bone until all self-love slowly peters out and one sees all bodies on the street only as a scale to compare themselves to.

I have always had a problem understanding simple concepts, but the one that has got me the most number of bewildered looks is my idea of INHALE and EXHALE.

“No, when you EX-hale you deflate,” they tell me.

But I have always felt that if I one day forget that I am fat, and let go of my breath, I’m going to expand and take up space and engulf all the walls and bounds.

Exhale Loop is an attempt at starting to live as (in the words of a dear friend) “an affirmation, not an apology.” It is the story of a midnight dance, a dizzying exhale. This is not a fairytale affirmed only by a ‘pretty’ prince falling in love with the large body. This is about making it to a safe space, half staggering, and the elation of a whole breath.

This is about a boundless state of being, and in the spell of nothingness and no onlookers, moving to music.

Taking up space.