You tried to **** me

but how do you make a gunshot look like an accident
from that angle?

A stab puncture but it was only you and I

So you went for an emotional ****** but you forgot the body keeps walking
  
              Next time you wanna play God,
                       Remember I know how to play too

"I hate you more when I'm drunk" you said

    Everything about me makes you angry
I still sit on my hands and try not to say anything unless spoken too
"No one else will deal with you, ****, stop crying, I don't want people seeing my woman with tear stains."
    So I wouldn't cry in front of you anymore

     Each night I'd fall asleep helpless to my meal sized portion of pills
Anti-anxiety, antidepressant, sedative, pain killer, sleeping aid
"You're just like your Mother, all messed up"
I'm so ******* tolerant and you're so ******* disturbed
At least my Mother, didn't **** my married Father for his money
Sorry I just told everyone that

"Why can't you be more like...
Claire? Caitlin? Maia? Anna?"
I don't want to be like them
but if I was, you'd probably actually love me or at least stop
smacking me hard enough to make my jaw ache for hours
Three days before you put me in the hospital,
      by the way I tested positive for Rohypnol
You gave me a ring, solid gold and diamonds
that night you weren't worried about my stomach being pumped
but,
     "She better be wearing that ring, better not lose it in the hospital"

I flushed your $15,000 guilt gift down a hospital toilet.

I hate the smell of cigarette smoke
because I could smell it
when I lay crying, lingerie garter shattered,
stocking ripped at the 50's seam, red wrists aching
He said he wouldn't do it again
but he wanted to **** his hate into me
I'd slam the bathroom door
and only come out when I could retreat to the safety of his Mother
Every night I'd stare at the ceiling
wishing his heart valve would fail, or he'd accidentally
overdose on his prescribed blood thinners and
I'd be lucky enough to awake to his corpse

I need feminism
because men are more upset about people saying "all men"
than they are about the fact that 1 in 4 women will be ***** in their lifetime.

Not harassed, not catcalled,
*****
And that is not okay.

I need feminism because out of the four women
I speak to everyday
two of them have been *****
and all four of them can't walk to their car
without sticking their keys through their fingers to
feel the slightest inclination of safety.

I need feminism
because the other day in my math class
a student said "She was asking for it"
and the teacher agreed.  

I need feminism
because when my father wasn't drinking
he was telling me to be a man.

I need feminism
because the way my father taught me to treat women
was to get them drunk.
It's not his fault,
he knew no better.

I need feminism
because my father knew no better.

step number one: read the book wintergirls.
tuck away every detail like you're cramming for a test.
dog-ear the pages and carry it with you like a travel guide.
decide that with your fingers and toes always icy cold for as long as you can remember,
you were destined to be a wintergirl.
reread it periodically, for inspirational purposes.

step two: download the myfitnesspal app.
use it to track every calorie you put into your body.
memorize that an oreo has seventy calories, an apple has one hundred, a cup of hot chocolate has eighty,
a bagel has two hundred seventy (a number that terrifies you),
and on and on and on.
let numbers float behind your eyes just before you go to bed,
and let them stay there as you throw off the covers to do guilty pushups and situps in your room
for twenty minutes (burning one hundred and twenty calories).
ignore the warnings shouted at you in red text
when you eat less than twelve hundred calories per day.
look at the projections it gives you for five weeks from now
with weights that seem both too small and too large at the same time.
when your net for the day hits the negatives after weeks of trying,
feel the slightest pang of satisfaction.

step three: find your "thinspiration".
make a tumblr just to look at pictures of jutting-out spines and thigh gaps and ribs.
hold your phone up next to your reflection in the mirror
and pick out everywhere your body differs from hers.
when the girls on the fitness blogs start looking too heavy for your goal,
find the eating-disorder blogs.
obsess over their bodies almost as much as you obsess over yours,
but not quite as much.

step four: begin losing weight.
imagine yourself floating away, feather-light.
imagine yourself becoming skin and bones.
imagine this as you drag your heavy body from class to class,
as your muscles waste from malnutrition.
imagine this as you have to clean your hairbrush out
three times while you work tangles from your hair.
imagine this as you snap at anyone and everyone,
as you spend hours locked in your room.

step five: become a poet and write about yourself.
romanticize your own demons, just by calling them demons.
use as many metaphors as you can,
to avoid the harsh language of the truth.
and especially avoid writing about the crippling guilt
that hits you when you eat too much,
you're fat you're worthless you'll never be anything,
and hits you when you don't eat enough,
what's wrong with you how did you let it get to this point
voices in your head never abating.
avoid writing about your lack of motivation and constant exhaustion and always,
always, use words that imply mystery.
describe your mind as foggy, call your body diminishing.
never say it how it is, because you could convince yourself to quit.
never say that it's torture and you're in pain
and you just wish you were eight again, never considering this path.
never say that you need help but you don't want help.

if you have the urge to say these things,
say only that this disorder is not one you would willingly give up,
because you finally have something to control.
because it is the truth,
but it is also the romanticized truth.