From the Collection

The body shrinks, the spirit swells.
What paradox!
This loss and gain of self.

***

The world around me tightens.
You move in close.
I cinch up my satchel’s shoulder strap,
Draw you closer still.

***

My class ring comes out of hiding,
Reminds me of tragic days,
Slips off my slender finger.

Good riddance.

From the Author’s Note

Obesity disguised me so well that even I didn’t know who I really was. The mask of fat obscured my true identity. I tried numerous times to remove the mask through diet. But these attempts were all futile. No matter how hard I tried, I remained vastly overweight, and the man I really was remained hidden from the world. I came to the conclusion that there was no effective way of removing the disguise. Obesity would forever be a part of who I was. Thank God I was wrong!

In May of 2009, I was given a chance to try Take Shape For Life, a weight-loss program backed by the experts at Johns Hopkins University. I had seen it work for others, giving me hope that it might, perhaps, work for me. I started the program skeptically. My skepticism dissolved after I lost ten pounds in the first seven days. Six months later, I had lost 117 pounds, had dropped from a 44-inch waist to a 32-inch waist, and had exchanged all my double-extra large shirts for medium shirts.

As my body transformed, I would look at the man in the mirror and ask, “Who is that?” Without my heft to disguise me, I was free to be the man I really was—the man who had been hiding deep within my own body. Because this man was largely unknown to me, I began to write about him. Each discovery of self, each milestone of transformation, I recorded in a poem, the collection of which I fondly referred to as my Tales of Contraction. In

this chapbook, I present my favorite poems from the collection. These poems are ordered chronologically, walking you through the months I spent losing my excess weight. My hope is that they will encourage others who long to unmask the man or woman within.