I've a bad habit.
Of bringing up the bodies
of memories, to make sure they're still in their graves.
Thought I've marked them well.
They rest comfortably in the deep furrows
carved in my brain
by wind and water and whispered words.
Eventually I'll let them rest in peace
When fresh new furrows have been dug,
and I'll plant forget-me-nots
before the tombstones
time himself has carved.

I skip that song again.
Too many memories still hang on the words,
the notes clang like old glass bottles
the woman with the red scarf tied to the oak tree,
they knock in the wind, fragile whiskey ghosts,
of times to sacred to be remembered now.
So I'll skip that song
till the bottle strings break,
and my someday-daughter asks
about the snowflake shards of glass
beneath the old oak tree.

It seems that depression
has a magnetic pull to poets.
We wear it, our stubborn scarlet letter,
Hidden between crinkled pages and ink spattered hands.
Our fickle muse,
if he stays around too long, he smothers us,
till we cannot even lift the pen,
and the words are left to swim around in circles
of darkening thought.

I was 17,
when we discussed workout routines in gym,
thin legs branching from ruby-red shorts,
skin pale and dappled in winter air.
I described my workout of 200's.
200 crunches, 200 sit-ups, etc. etc. etc.
"You make me feel fat,"
my model- built friend complained.

I stared down at my shrinking thighs,
wondering how fat she would feel,
with hollow spaces beneath her skin,
numbed by the gnawing of metabolism on muscle.
If she could feel her labored breaths circulate
through drained limbs,
and saw the stars and sparks in the haze of exhaustion,
that perpetuated around me.
If she shivered
walking home in without a coat in December
simply because
Cold burned more calories than warm.  

At 17, I learned
Electric blankets were invented for asylum patients
so they wouldn't freeze when they were lain outside
to get fresh air.
I shivered under mine in a warm house--
strangled by three layers of hoodies,
a morbidly comical scene-- the skeletal inmate cowering
in masses of cotton
and still cold.

The skeleton in the mirror had no eyes,
Only its bloated stomach stared back at me.
Forget the thigh-gap,
the stomach was the only thing that mattered.
It should be as flat as the unleavened bread
I refused at communion:
I didn't know how many calories it had.

I was 17,
when the word "beauty" fell from my vocabulary.  
Lank, unwashed hair hung limp to hide the
Inflamed scratches on my face: feeble efforts to eradicate
the hatred, guilt, over two extra bites,
and what I had become.
Here I was, in all my gollum-like, two by four perfection:
except the stomach.
That ****** bloated *****
I wished I could tear it from my body,
Throw it aside to rot on the heap
of moulding high-school dreams
I kept in the corner of my room.

But it remained, day after day,
the stubborn thing stayed on,
even when filled with saltwater,
to force it to give up the last bit of its contents.
Three mugs, and several tablespoons later
it finally relinquished,
in the emergency room,
as my mother stood
holding my hair and crying.
I still thought she was over-reacting.

I looked up at the ER doctor,
middle aged and blonde,
her eyes were sympathetic, but annoyed,
As she asked me if I was trying to **** myself.
"No," I said. Not Yet I thought,
I heard my dry throat crack with the words,
"I have an eating disorder."

As I looked out
into the great beyond,
I, the voyager, trapped in doldrums,


Found the soul that had slipped away from me.
My quest ended, I discarded
the gravity-encased form my mother gave me,
Trading it for the light,
The soul had always longed to be clothed in.


And my soul danced,
on the dihcotomic sea of what is,
and what will be,
waltzing across the waves of dreams,
as light is want to do,
whenever it meets water.

'Today, I should be happy.'
I told Myself, as Myself and I
stared into Our mirror of thoughts
contemplating the day's ensemble.

'There are too many sad things here,'
said Myself. 'We've worn black every day this week.'
But I paused, and smoothed the wrinkled raven skirt
across Our knees.
'But it's grey today' protested I,
'and red makes Us look garish.'

'No one said We had to be all happy,' Myself mused,
'We'll wear the red scarf with the black coat,
a little happy, but not so much as to drown out the sad.'
I nodded. 'A little sad never hurt anyone.'

When a star burns black,
But no one is around to hear it,
it screams the last, lingering, piercing note,
of a symphony
written for a dying wish,
and a lost dream.

Finally imploding into silence
where even the brightest of lights,
is lost in hollow darkness.