Breath in the madhouse
freezes in air like ice.
The drip drip drip
of life
turns inward like a hooked nose.
It is time for the melting,
it is time to have your own breath caught
and put away neatly like mugs in a cabinet,
away from the lips,
away from the throat
with its noble muscles.
It is time to be saved
from your own spent mouth
that bleeds ***** and lies, lies, lies.

I stare down my straw.
It’s floating in a cold beige soup
that I must drink
like some perverse mother’s milk.
Two table wardens pretend not to stare.
But they do stare
in quick flashes and sideways glares--
they’re supposed to be my mothers
teaching me how to get fat again.
The clock ticks forward
its hands make puncture wounds in my eyes
that mimic mouths.
I shift in my chair and my thighs slide
in my own anxious mess.
One warden opens her mouth to speak
but a cough comes out instead.
I do not take a sip
and the clock yawns.
I do not take a sip
and the clock gives up its patient dance and
the warden who coughed pours the contents of my glass
down the drain.
I ask if she could pour me out too--
*****-by *****.
She rolls her eyes at the spread of my thighs
that beg to be fed--
I do not drink.

Women like me
tear their hair out
over things like this--
calories in peanut butter
the bit that’s left on the spreading knife
after your sandwich is stacked and sliced in four neat triangles
(you already dipped the corners in bleach)
Blood in your toilet bowl
from vomiting too passionately
your esophagus is eating itself up
(you don’t go to the doctor, you don’t even tell your mother)
A clogged kitchen sink
the disposal blades wound tightly
with the spaghetti you poured out like tight little worms
(you blame your roommates for the mess)
And the quiet ache of every muscle
that refuses to relax
when all you want to do is sleep.

Two anxious women sit across the table from each other
interrupted by two dishes of food,
two glasses of water,
and six utensils resting on paper napkins.
One thinks to herself,
“Is this sickness?”
the other,
“I am the sickest.”
The sick picks up her fork and licks the tines,
preparing it for a bite that will never arrive in her mouth.
The sickest folds her arms across her chest
and pushes her dish away with her eyes
and they sit in silence
with loud eyes and trembling hands
willing their fear to disappear.

Today I woke up with holes in my hand,
the stigmata of a failed human
who tried to starve her way to divinity.

These hollows are heaven’s rejection letters
spelled out in limp flesh
and dried blood.

When my mouth begs for water,
these hands cannot scoop up a single drop
from life’s grand wells.
And anyway, my mouth was sewn up long ago.

I hold both hands outward, towards the light.
They do not warm, they only burn,
and anyway, I cannot see the light
through frosted eyes.

My fingers hang from their spreading base
and cannot find the strength to fold
along their stiff hinges.
And anyway, my skin tightens like ice.

All that remains is fractured bone
and sea-green veins
that spread like spider’s legs
strong on a broken loom.

I cannot create if I cannot breath,
the pen’s ink separates like stolen air
drawn through a sieve.

Creation breeds life, endless drops of life,
but I shut that door on myself
and it’s still jammed in its latch.

The oxygen around me hides in small corners
and speaks in a whisper,
“you do not tempt me.”

Blank pages read like foreign print
and speak in ancient tongues,
unheard and unread.

The butcher in me
tears muscle from bone.
I say to my father,
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“This” being a project of blood and sweat
like the science fair project I stayed up all night to perfect,
do you remember?
But I am not a vinegar volcano
or a lopsided solar system
strong on needle-thin wire.
I am an animal skinning itself
in the face of a bear--
but the bear is invisible.
“Is it really even there?”
I ask.
You do not know the answer,
you do not even hear the question
because of the glass in my throat
and the powder on my tongue.
So I claw myself open and out
and you close your eyes and mouth
and the maybe-maybe not bear remains
as my bones break under the weight of fear.
“I wish things were different,”
I say
as the sun closes its doors
and my shadow sinks into the earth.

We are sitting on your floor smoking cigarettes
You ask me how my day has been
I ash my cigarette and say
In the most casual way
“I’ve thrown up seven times today”
You ask if I’m contagious
I feel my throat let out a laugh
That is half pride
Half shame
You barely know my name
And I’m already chasing you away
Because I’m too sick to hide my pain
But not sick enough to let you know how it feels
To speak in a language of violent expulsion
Where syllables etched in the fibers of food
Link together to spell out words
in toilet water
And these words sink into messages that tell me that
I’m doing the right thing
The necessary thing
And that this is the only way for me
To speak.

I am living with eleven dead women--
rather, I am dead with eleven others
just like me.
Even the fat ones
are all snapped bone
and skin so thin you can see right through
to the blue veins.
Our skin, our veins, our bone
come from one mother,
monstrous and controlling.
We sit like puppets on strings
but at night we lie with death like animals.

Doctor Dearest,
when I ask you to drip sweetness into my veins
do not tell me that life looks better
with stuck-open eyes and *******.
I want to feel my arms light up with the anticipation
of release.

Do not prescribe me rest, I’ve had enough of that
to make an infant cry out in envy.
And anyway, my bed is stone
and my blanket is fire spun into thread.
Sleep does not tempt me unless
it is guaranteed.

Do not tell me to eat
or unfold your little pyramid,
a stack of sins that weigh on me
with the full force of an iron curse.
Food does not welcome me into its yellow-walled home--
it senses desire and punishes me.

Do not pull a magic pill out of your hundred dollar hat
and fold my fingers along its dusty edges
because I will crush it under my weight
and piece it back together with spittle-thread,
the glue of a starver’s refusal.

Do not promise me that time heals pain
when I’m not even an inch up this mountain.
My feet cannot balance on footholds
carved in mud,
and my hands were stolen
from a chest in my own ghost’s attic.
They haven’t been used in this lifetime.

Doctor, Sir, do not tell me that I am sweet enough
to tempt even the fullest stomachs
and the tallest men.
I know the taste of dirt
because it sours my tongue and scrapes my throat.
And I am tired, so tired
of digesting Earth
when I wasn’t meant to be fed.

You, the therapist,
tell me to imagine my uncontrollable urges,
shame, and despair
as reptilian demons lurking
below the ship that I sail across
an unknown sea with no land in sight.

I tell you that the demons are me,
many-headed and armed with unlit torches
that search for fire underneath my skin,
inside my veins.

I dig my nails into my chest,
trying to claw out the shame that sits on my heart
like a cinderblock.

There is no ship, there is no sea,
there are no heavy planks below my feet
to separate the humanness from the monstrosity
that twists my insides into red-hot twine
and bruises my skin so easily,
like it was meant to be.

You, the therapist,
cling to your metaphor with an iron grip.
I, the monster,
try to claw out of my own skin,
but I do not have a map,
and I cannot imagine your sea that leads
to the promised land
because my eyes are turned inward,
searching for blood to tame the shame
that burns in me.