Milo
To most,
Probably has no deeper meaning
Than
Chocolaty goodness
And vague links
To long ago sports days

Unless perhaps
You were
A year 9 student
At Methodist Ladies College
Where swarthy canisters
Were
(and still are I suppose)
Dolled out each Monday
At the 8 week
“Country experience”
For city slicker girls like me.

Each Monday
Houses of 8
Fought over who “owned”
This weeks gleaming green can.

(Along with cow defecations,
Marshy fields
And the sense it was
Unnatural to coop 72  
15 year old girl up together)
Milo became an institution.

Incidentally Milo proved to be
My very first withdrawal
From energy sustenance
And forged an over whelming need
for control

Surrounded and
Confounded
By the bodies of
Dancers, riders, gymnasts
My frame seemed
Completely engorged in fat
And unworthiness

(not to mention
Hope told Lauren who told Belinda
Who told me
I resembled a potato
Round, unperfected and dirty)

While the others
(as if for the first time
in their sheltered little lives)
ate Milo
straight
from
the
tin
with wicked smiles
dribbling granulated chocolate
and double dipping
sticky stained spoons
they whispered
“we’re so bad”
and giggled

A secret society
That I had no intention of joining.

Each time the tin passed my way
I smiled
And through closed teeth
Said “no thanks”

I found more glee
In the concave of my stomach
And the way
My ribs poked out
As if soon
They might pierce
All the way through
the lucid skin
(fat)
that had the bony fingers
suffocated

Milo was my first lesson in
(And successful execution
Of)
C O N T R O L