- Olivia Brooks
- Nov 24
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
That Winter I Grew Fat
on love: he fried me
eggs in butter—never enough butter
he’d say as he baked me one more loaf
of sourdough, planted raspberries
on my tongue with his mouth, held out ladles
brimming with apple tea brewed in cinnamon,
honey to sink my lips into.
More than love I’d say it was a diet
of being loved. The machine of his body craned me
from the sofa to the dinette. His Honda migrated me
across rivers, out of the lonely walls of my home
into his. This could also be why I got fat.
I could get to places—I mean his place—without
having to move much. Every road is directionless
when you have nowhere to get to. Was it the high
of having morphed into an object
of want? This unnameable feeling
rubbed up against my bones. And something hot buzzed
through me so vehemently it could be mistaken
for inner confidence. Each week, I fed him back
a smooch, sometimes while holding the temples that held
his eyes, sometimes kneading his lower back
before a soft rub on the penis—more mouthfuls
of egg fried rice, roasted kabocha soup,
broccoli charred with zest of lemon. I kept feeding him,
hoping he’d keep feeding me. Who does not want
to be wanted? This overgrowing, gluttonous feeling—
it coated my insides like a layer of lard, viscous and willful
and protective—not love but sticky like love, it sheathed me
like the connective tissue of periosteum—like bread
coated with butter, like penis obscured in lube.
VASVI KEJRIWAL is a former lawyer from India. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and also the recipient of the AI Young Memorial scholarship from the Community of Writers Conference. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Florida Review, Rattle, Nimrod, Shō Poetry Journal, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and elsewhere. She is a MFA candidate at New York University. You can find more about her at vasvikejriwal.com.