Dear Milo

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Dear Milo, Let me be the first to write you a love letter. You are plump and delicious, as fat as a ham. I count the creases on your thighs and feel rich. I remember meeting a friend?s baby when she was about 2 months old. The baby?s white legs were unbelievably fat, like unbaked breadsticks or grubworms. My friend was so proud of those legs. She dressed her baby in revealing diaper covers so that everyone could admire those meaty stems. Your sister, Inky, who had seven months on that baby, was crawling hard, burning the fat off everything but the ripe fruit of her cheeks. I looked at my friend?s daughter?s legs, bulging out from the elastic bands of her colorful briefs, and thought, ?Oh man, of course Patty thinks they?re cute. Patty?s her mother. But Jesus, look at them! They?re really fat! It looks like she?s been pounding those deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches Elvis Presley loved.?

I told Patty that her daughter was adorable but secretly preferred your sister?s lean drumsticks, scratched and bruised from those early attempts at mobility. At your pudgiest, you were at least one crease fatter than Patty?s baby ever was. I loved you beyond reason. I am drunk on your pulchritude. I love you now, and I?ll love you two months from now when you?ve run yourself creaseless.

I love you the way I loved my boyfriends, if memory serves, except I know I won?t find you boring and offensive in a year and a half. I love you the way I loved them at one o?clock in the morning, when I pedaled my bicycle through the dark streets of Chicago, my skin electric with anticipation after an eight-hour shift in the restaurants where I worked. I love you the way I loved them before I got to know them, before I met their parents and grew weary of their casual farting. I love you like I loved the one with beautiful hands and the calfskin jacket, but more. I love you like I loved the one from that endless happy summer on the front porch of my dilapidated undergraduate house, the one who quoted Shakespeare, but more.

I don?t write these things to make you squirm in high school. I write them because I love every inch of your body. Your breath is pure banana. I am completely infatuated.

I love the small twigs of wax in your ears. I love the grimy triangles I trim from the edges of your fingernails, always too late to stop you from scratching a red divot across your plump cheek. I love the dirt between your toes. I was wrong at Christmas. There?s nothing so horrible about the little patties you pump into your diapers. The exact color of whatever you?ve been eating, they prove that your innards are performing at the peak of their abilities. I love your father, but when he goes to the bathroom I want him to flush and light a match.

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