I didn’t know my wings were clipped until I heard them trying to beat the air—bruised against invisible bars I thought were just the sound of living Black in Mississippi. I grew up wanting to fold myself, make a paper swan of my flesh, something smaller, obedient to hands that kept telling me, shh now, hush that bright thing inside. By twelve, whenever I stepped into the shower, I’d count every inch of myself, inventory the roundness, the soft. My belly claimed its own gravity, and at church, I learned holy things belonged in thin packages—sash and suit and secrets in the mouth. Nobody praised a wide body unless it was stretched across a pew, carrying harmony but never wanting. I spent a decade of Sundays singing—voice growing as the rest of me tried to shrink. Shame, I’ve worn you like a clinging shirt in July, sweat pooling under arms, thigh rubbing thigh like a guilty whisper.
Fat queer boys don’t get love songs. Not the ones in the open, anyway. In high school, I learned cleverness as armor—draped sarcasm over my chest, layered humor under the soft moan of wanting to be loved out loud. I moved through locker rooms as a fog, eyes on the tile, not the mirrors, careful not to touch the world with too much hope. Aunties would pinch my cheeks, call me ‘husky’ as a kindness—I heard ‘undeserving,’ every time.
I wanted to unspool—let my body tumble out from under the casing of other people’s hungers. My grandmother’s kitchen was a holy place, cinnamon scent clinging to the air like gospel. She’d press biscuits into my hands, her hands steady, knuckles dark and wrinkled, fat as mine. I see now how she wore softness as a prayer, arms wide, lap open to the world’s ache. When she looked at me, I was always more than enough—the counter, warm and crowded with laughter, was the first place I felt unjudged. I learned to knead dough and hunger into something like love. The church never praised her largeness, but her love fed the whole neighborhood. I see the sacrament in that now.
Fashion came late to me. For years, I believed a body like mine should be buttoned-down, layered, hidden under overcast colors. The mall was a battlefield—one that did not want me. Stores sold aspiration, not affirmation. I’d press my hands to racks of shirts marked ‘XL’ and ‘XXL,’ then duck into dressing rooms where the fluorescent lights brutalized every fold. I marinated in dread, sweat beading in every crevice as fabric caught at my shoulder, denied me entry. I learned to slip into thrift-shop magic, where I could conjure velvet and glitter, let my wrists breathe in satin, dare to dream of being seen, not just endured. Some days I am a bright gold caftan, swishing down the street, bold as magnolia in full sun; some days I retreat to softness, hoodie cloaking me like a secret. Both are mine.
Sometimes I want to know who I’d have been if the world had never told me to be less. There is ache in me that dances, sure-footed and soft-bellied. I marvel at the axis of my hips, the way fat sways in rhythm all its own. It took practice to move without rehearsal, to let sweat trace its way down my back as I dance in my apartment, curtains open, laughing at the moon. The first time a boy touched my stomach tenderly—spread his palms and said, you are so beautiful—I nearly wept. I’d been carrying so much silence inside this flesh, like stones. Breadth belongs to me, not to apology. To be held and hungered for is a revolution.
This body—my home, my drag, my stubbornness—is radical in the South. Here, God is everywhere: in the church pew, in Mama’s kitchen, in gossip, in the sharp slap of Sunday morning sunlight. I am Black, queer, fat, femme—every word an inherited flare, every day a negotiation with a town that measures your worth by how little space you take. There are days I want to be invisible, to unhook from every gaze that dares to calculate my value. But lately, I wake up unshackled—even with the ache. I let my feet dangle over the side of the bed, watch skin catch gold in the slant of morning. My thighs claim their place. I conjure softness, forgive the mirror, run lotion palms over my round stomach, whisper yes, yes, you belong here.
I am learning the algebra of reclamation. Healing is not a straight line. Some mornings, shame climbs into bed, cold and familiar, breathing my same breath. Still, I rise—pull on red lipstick, cut-off denim, a shirt so loud it feels like a dare. I walk into the world full-throated, thighs swishing, belly leading the way. There is grief in this, yes—the childhoods I never got to live, the first loves ruined by secrecy, the clothes I ripped apart so they’d make me smaller, the yearning for what felt holy in someone else’s skin.
But more so: there is joy. Everyday joy, fat and sparkling. The kind that sings up from my belly, winks back at stares on the sidewalk, topples over into cackling at family reunions, finds pride in the glitter that dusts my collarbone after a good night out. There are days when I wear yellow, luminous as a field of southern flowers, and strangers look at me and see, really see, what I dared to claim. Some might still flinch. Some might weaponize scripture, or shame, or their own hunger. But I’ve tasted freedom—velvet, heat, laughter, hands running loving and sure along my back. I stay hungry for more.
Every time I speak—body loud, heart open, hips swaying under summer linen—I unshackle my wings a little more. I write my own psalms, fat as thunder, soft as rain on magnolia leaves. I let the world hear me rustle, not as warning but as invitation. I am fat, queer, southern, and sacred. My softness is not something to be forgiven. It is my brightest offering, flung wild and golden into the wide blue air, daring anyone to name it anything but holy.