Vast

I’ve never seen a storm cloud

that I could not open my throat

and consume whole

No thunderous emotion I couldn’t

grind between my molars

so I could swallow it down

I’ve held them inside me

undigested

as a vast ocean holds water

Until the day my bones

my hard, earthbound bones

locked

The clouds pushed in

faster than I could swallow them

the storms were more than I could eat

The ocean inside me roiled and rose

the waters encroached

eroding the shoreline

A climate cataclysm

where the only solution

the scientists can offer

is to close my mouth

to shrink myself

when I have more than ever to hold

They are asking me to greet my feelings

those great clouds that terrorise my skies

asking me to spit them back out

They tell me that even if

I cannot consume them

it does not mean

they will consume me

They are asking me to trust

So, with great trepidation, I will

I will sew my mouth shut as I crack my heart open

I will trust that despite what my eyes tell me

the shore and the sky will never truly meet

I will trust that even if am smaller

I will never be small

because my vastness is inside me

I know this

I ate it

Kelly Mary McAllister moves through the world as a fat, queer, and disabled woman. She lives in a shoebox in the Toronto sky with a small black dog. She writes poems for her soul, stories for her nieces and far too many emails for her day job at a non-profit. Her work has appeared in Canthius, Grain, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Door is a Jar among other places. She can be found at KellyMaryMcAllister.ca.