13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

by Mona Awad

she has transformed, as she always seems to do around this time of night, into something you could almost love for an hour.

“This isn’t depressing. It’s just sad. Sad is beautiful. Sad makes me happy.” “Well, it just makes me sad.”

Maybe all this time, all the little ways he looked at her and didn’t look at her, all the things he said or didn’t say or didn’t say enough added up to this awful request without his knowledge or consent, like those ransom notes made from letters cut from different magazines.

The sort of dress I’d wish to wear to attend the funeral of my former self, to scatter the ashes of who I was over a cliff’s edge.