Fall '23

The gimmicky, sun-melted metal, penguin charm around my ankle, given from you to me — near my toes — looks forlorn today. “Me too, penguin buddy, me too,” I say. Picking at the lock.
   
You froze me out. Eyes narrowed at me. Then, pausing. Internal howling. Get better, you shouted, from a distance.

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The sun, dejected, staring blankly at the tears I wipe away. Gelatin: bulbous, slippery. & ice-cream without sprinkles. The sweetness masticates to a pulp, until I spit it out; love gone rotten.
       The thesaurus of words that would sum up my recovery.
                                                                     Sprinkles would have made it better.
   

Eat two scoops, the therapist said. Pretend one is for you & one is for someone you love.
 

Easier to go down, she added. I shrugged.

I pinch the nonfat that I swear I encounter, smooth and rich as a latte, near my elbows. Then, of course, I'll picture you. Gone but here. Even in your absence, I see your french-braid in my peripheral.
 

“It’s not there,” you start. “There’s no fat there.”
 

Anorexia is such a pretty word for such an ugly diagnosis. A slip-and-slide from denial, to dieting, to skipping breakfast, to sauntering down the pavement, running laps around the moon like a wolf until you’re 
                      mostly mange & bone, 
                                                                          where the body used to be.

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Until you starve in nocturnal degrees, until you’re primal. Don’t be me.

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The therapists leave you alone for longer than you would think safe, here. I turn the vanilla ice-cream in my palm like a cradle. Flip it upside down like an omelet in a pan.

    “You’re never going to get out. You’ll spend your days only daydreaming of me,” you say. Wolf notes near my ear, banal.
   
               “Is that how you want to be seen?” 

Curling & uncurling your ballet plied feet, flushed in fuschia toenail glitter. The kind that never looked any good on me. The leaps you always landed looking bigfoot-ish, crash landing filled, on me. The way I followed you, only to stumble. You wore pink leotards; mine were inky gray, elephant forgetting, ivory glistening white.
   
 

I clutch the secrets found in ribs. Remember I want to see you again. Eyeballs bulge. I only am allowed to see you if I leave here, in one piece.
   
 

All animal now, I lick the pavement, pretend it’s sun. Vanilla mixed with asphalt. Hope I get some calories before the sweetness sinks completely. Hoping no one sees my tongue, licking remnants of something already gone.
   
 

When I’m asked how this eating disorder harms me & I say it turns me into tongue & gravel & wolf & mammal —
   
I hope you’ll understand the words between the words. The pleats underneath the folds only I can see.
 

I hope you’ll howl in a chorus, like a wolf pack, instead of only me.
 

I hope you’ll plait my hair into a french braid — just like you — slowly, slowly,
 

So the strands, the parts that tie together —

do not unravel.

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