Dear Doctor
By Sam Pierstorff
You’re lucky that it was my wife and not me
who took our five-year-old daughter
to your office to unclog the cough
from the drain in her throat.
Because when you weighed her on your scale
that is pounced on daily by rabid children,
and you suggested, without subtlety,
that she was fat, without considering
the mass of muscle bubbling beneath
her Hello Kitty tee shirt, without knowing
how easily she can do 30 push-ups,
which is 29 more than you have ever done—
I would have given you a comprehensive
rectal exam with the steel tip of my boot.
And when your ass deflated to its normal size,
which is, ironically, big enough to be its own planet,
I would have sat you down and explained
that on Sunday mornings, my daughter is
Lance Armstrong on a Dora the Explorer bicycle.
On Tuesdays, she somersaults across gymnastic floors,
swings like a pendulum between parallel bars,
and climbs a rope to heights you will never reach.
At home, she pummels champions on Wii boxing,
her fists firing like pistons, as I train her
for a future of dealing with men like you
who will never understand the true weight
of a really strong woman.
