My grandmother asks what size my dress is by Lucy De Maio

My grandmother asks what size my dress is

I want to tell her, infinity. The biggest number.
The sum of every meal I’ve missed. The total count
of every bone in my body that weakened when starved,
thinning into things just as destructive as they were
destroyed. A value greater than every time she’s asked.
An irrational number, one that spirals like we both do,
one that oscillates to the point of collapse. The kind of
number that you don’t even know how to read aloud.
A number so towering and imaginary you can feel it
encroaching on your space, your brain, that little corner
that does the calculating, the panicking, tracks the hours
wasted wondering if the limit exists, if one can approach zero.
A number no one will discover. The result of adding the tags
of every dress I’ve ever bought, every unflattering waist
I’ve regretted. The sum of every sliver of shallow hope
born from flat morning stomachs. The product given by
multiplying instability with ignorance, the kind that
unconditional love can never excuse. The quantity
measured when you stack up every minute we two have
drained thinking about our bodies instead of living in them.
The number you get when you trace the family tree,
adding up every woman sucking in her abdomen in the
photo, hoping the universe will swallow it, hoping her
daughter granddaughter great granddaughter won’t have to
twist in her torso too— not hoping that she won’t.

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Lucy De Maio is Chicago Youth Poet Laureate 2026. She loves poetry that reclaims heritage, art that explores what it means to live in a body, and anything about trains.