Forty-Four Triple D
I’ve made peace with my breasts and — irrationally, as you would love a relative who makes ridiculous statements over dinner.
by Leah Mueller
Flat-chested in the locker room at fourteen,
the other girls laughed at my breasts
which huddled below my shirt
like tiny rodents hiding underneath a rug.
“You really need to wear a bra”
they always said haughtily,
while giving each other knowing glances
that said, “she’s so weird that she
doesn’t even know what we mean.”
I learned to shimmy into my shirt
quickly, like a bomb was about to explode
and I only had three seconds to dress
after gym class had ended.
Later, my breasts expanded like mutant bread dough,
growing at an alarming rate,
while my mother nodded and said smugly,
“See, I told you they would get larger.”
Even when I wanted my breasts to halt
their relentless forward progression,
they continued to expand, until
they seemed as though they might burst
from the pressure. At first I shackled them
in brassieres, which I removed
the moment I returned from school.
I peeled off the wretched harnesses
and threw them on the floor,
then collapsed on the couch like an executive
at the end of a long and trying day.
After high school, my boyfriend suggested
that I stop wearing bras
since they made me so uncomfortable
and I readily complied, but my breasts
bounced when I walked through the streets
of various cities, drawing appreciative stares
from the ever-vigilant male populace.
One afternoon, as I strolled down Rampart Street
in New Orleans in the mid-afternoon heat
while wearing a tee shirt that featured tennis implements,
a man called out to me from half a block away,
“Look! Your tennis balls are bouncing!”
People always had something stupid to say
without a shred of embarrassment, but
I was the one who was supposed to feel ashamed.
For years I endured similar confrontations
in stiff-lipped silence, until finally
when I was seven months pregnant, a coworker said,
“You really need to wear a bra.”
My breasts were almost as large
as my ripe, protruding stomach
so I reluctantly made a trip to the department store
and wandered in a daze to the underwear section.
All of the cute bras were for tiny-breasted women,
because the rest of us were considered cows
who needed yokes for our enormous udders.
Once you got past size 36 B,
the choices were harshly limited
to plain white and beige, with underwire
that cut like knives, and no lace
because obviously we didn’t need to feel pretty.
After much anguished deliberation
I dutifully selected two nursing bras,
paid for them with cash, and went home.
I felt much better wearing them,
and no longer walked with an arched back
like a pregnant prizefighter.
Whenever I removed my brassiere,
gravity caused my breasts to plunge downward
and my spine to instantly lose alignment.
It was hard for me to fathom
why my breasts were still considered attractive
by hordes of mammary fetishists,
and when I was in a room full of men
I could tell within minutes
which of them were tit-obsessed
and had issues with their mothers.
If one of them was lucky enough
to find himself in bed with me,
it was a winning situation for both of us
because, despite their enormous girth,
my breasts were extremely sensitive to stimuli
and my nipples sprang forth
eagerly, like they had a life of their own.
Occasionally, a well-meaning friend,
always a woman, will inquire,
“Why don’t you look into breast reduction?”
but I can no longer imagine myself
without enormous mammaries, and the idea
of a surgeon scooping into them
and removing the extra fat, severing tissues
that have given me both pleasure and discomfort
seems unspeakably sad and wrong.
Now, that I am three years shy of sixty,
tiny boys in the women’s locker room
sneak furtive peeks at my naked breasts
that droop and spill from my bathing suit
as I swiftly climb into my clothing.
Elderly men gape openly at my cleavage,
feeling as though they’ve earned the right
to do so, because of their advanced age,
or maybe they’re already senile
and don’t even know they’re staring.
I’ve made peace with my breasts
and have even learned to love them —
irrationally, as you would love a relative
who makes ridiculous statements over dinner.
All flesh is temporary, and when I die,
my breasts will be the last part of me to vanish.
My spirit will finally float upward
like a strip of paper in the breeze,
free at last from all bulky encumbrances,
but in the meantime, I walk carefully
and make certain I have plenty of support-
and, when I’m in yoga class
with skinny twenty-five year old girls,
whose pert bodies are in perfect alignment
during Downward Dog pose,
I smile as my breasts flop against my face,
because they’re the only ones I have.
Leah Mueller is an independent writer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of one chapbook, Queen of Dorksville (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2012), and two full-length books, Allergic to Everything (Writing Knights Press, 2015) and The Underside of the Snake (Red Ferret Press, 2015). Her work has been published in Blunderbuss, Sadie Girl Press, Origins Journal, Talking Soup, Silver Birch Press, Cultured Vultures, and many other publications. She is a regular contributor to Quail Bell magazine, and was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival. Leah was also a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest.