Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen

by Hannah Howard

know my eyes are broken because I see the picture from a college party. It is senior year, and so there are more parties than ever. Facebook tells me today is seven years later. Seven years ago, seeing that picture was a hot slap. My arms! They looked fat as the sausages hanging in stout rounds in windows in Little Italy, I was sure. I was sure I looked less like a human girl and more like a bovine. Because of the picture, I forbade myself the indulgent luxury of dinner. Because of that picture, I ran on the elliptical until I ran out of songs on my little green iPod. I swathed myself in my red quilt and read and read and stopped to cry and then to pass out. The next morning, I threw away the dress, the evidence. As if it were the dress’s fault. Seven years later, I look again. My arms are wrapped around Urs, and they look like fine arms to me now, good human arms, not even particularly fat. Our smiles are wide and true. I am sad for my former self, sad that I missed seeing all that love, riding its waves. All I could see were my arms, and, I now realize, I couldn’t even see them.