i.
I am a short, stout girl in the corner of the room
my arms were much smaller last June
I search for reasons not to relapse in shadows like corpses
they're all dead, anyway
because my roommate is obsessed with the gym
because my best friend is obsessed with fad diets
even though I have at least fifty pounds on both of them.

ii.
I am forcing myself to use recovery speech
because it gets me through therapy more effectively
"fat is not a feeling"
my mind scoffs as I speak
every word copied and pasted from someone else's recovery blog
but my recovery is not avocados and yoga mats and veganism
it is complicated
it is painful.

iii.
I am the small, queer girl in the pew at church
so nervous as the skin around my nails begin to bleed
the scar on my ******* says "*******"
to American evangelicalism
and yet my lips still sing the loudest
the product of the "moral right"
how lovely it is to pretend to belong.

iv.
I am acting like my body knows what it is doing
as I reach for the hands of my most recent lover
I drop hints to my Republican parents
church members
best friend
but still,
I am struggling.

v.
I am trying to undo the codification of bulimia
from the fibers of my bones
I relearn daily
spun like wool through the continuum
of someone else's broken body
I become a success story
for some
but for others
I am still fat.

vi.
I want my eating disorder
my abuse
my queerness
to look normal
to be typical
some say
assimilation is liberation
so why do I still feel
chained and bound?
why am I still
unfinished?

Sometimes I forget that I want to get better
It's harder to scream when you don't remember what happened to you
When your thoughts are only pictures
Not the chair, the couch, the carpet, the walls
It's everywhere, even with the best intentions

Like ****** Assault Awareness Month posters plastered all over my college
Even though we read epic poems by Derek Walcott
The man convicted of sexually harassing multiple women
And still teaches at Harvard
But my professor didn't feel it was pertinent information
Until my friend asked about it in class
Both he and Google claim it was a smear campaign
Even though he most likely touched every woman who testified.
They say we burn our own houses down
But we're left behind in the rubble

Senior year of high school
I get into an argument with my lunch table
They tell me how some women like to accuse high profile people of ****
When they are on top
See: Bill Cosby
My face is hot by this point in the conversation
I try to spit words out, but they sizzle up in midair
My friend asks
"If this happened, why are they all coming forward now?"
They say we burn our own houses down
But we're left behind in the rubble

A year earlier
When a boy with rogue hands and boiling breath
Caused my body and my words to freeze into my skin
I tried to scrub the dirt from myself
More times than I care to remember
I tell a friend
He tells me I should have reported it
No proof, next in line please
I tell another friend
She says I probably just regret it
I will get over it soon enough
They say we burn our own houses down
But we're left behind in the rubble

This world has built the home of my attacker up around me
I know that recovery is the price I pay for living in this body
When seeing his face is no longer wanting to **** myself
When purging will not control the places my shriveled up corpse was dragged to
But how can I want to get better
When I see how we are blamed for our own imprisonment?
When songs about **** are in every commercial
Every grocery store aisle
Every radio station that comes on repeat?

Recovery is the price I pay for living in this body
But sometimes it would be easier
To stop paying rent.

To my fake nails
That flaunted a pastel color in the fall
I don't remember why, exactly
I only recall ripping you off, one by one
Like petals from a daisy
It hurt, but I liked the sound of glue
Tearing off dead skin
Plunk you into the trash can
Because you didn't scratch his eyes out
Like you were told to
You didn't react
Like you were told to
Your body didn't fight back
Like you were told to
Instead, body break body shatter
Like glass on wood floor
Now, I watch her fall as smoothly as I did
When will she shatter for him?
Now, my real nails dig into my wrists
Holding onto everything you took
When you - I don't know what to call it anymore
Call it ****** assault
Shatter
Call it revictimization
Shatter
But that makes it seems like it was never his fault shatter in the first place
When your life becomes nothing
But sharpened nails and broken glass
You forget what you are made out of.
I see his iron bar face
But I am composed of diamond
Because the only thing that can break one
Is itself.

To the cigarette I left behind
I wish you were lit
Want you to burn that moment out of my memory
Leave holes in the carpet of my body
Like the holes in my story:
Why didn't you report it?
You did lead him on...
Well, what were you wearing?
Trusty nicotine wand
Could my cotton mouth not block his tongue from my throat?
You came to my rescue too little too late
Later, I pressed my finger to thumb
Squeezing you in between
I kissed your filter
And then another and another and another
Until I found myself kissing the pavement
Face down, halfway to forgetting
Forgetting the feeling of his body pressed against mine
The way I burnt up in his sweaty palms
My body bag sizzled around me
Incinerated while still barely alive.
Oh, dear cancer stick
I have felt your tragedy
As my body shriveled up beneath me
At the hands of another.

I wanted to write a poem about you
But I forgot how to say your name.
You see, it is slashed into my skin
By your razor sharp claws
But it hides itself inside the **** in my tongue
Twisting itself into knots
I fear the sound of your name out loud
Because someone might hear it
It might hurt someone who knows you
It might hurt my friend who dates you
She will claim that she loves the way your name billows out of her mouth
Smoke from a freshly rolled cigarette
Until she discovers it is laced with poison
Each time she takes a drag
It chokes me
I stand downwind, still
Eager to take you into my body
That's why I still feel your kiss sometimes
From before your hands carved a crucifix into my wooden flesh
My body became a dead tree
It loves lurking in dense corners
Searching for sunlight
I can't feel anyone's touch
Without believing I will be harmed, now
But I keep searching for love in dark places
I keep reaching for hands that don't look like yours
My tongue keeps saying the names of other people
But it cannot vocalize the phonetics behind each letter
Four letters
One syllable
Zach.
I said it, and it feels
Like taking back my own body
I write it, and it looks
Like I could call you Hell
Call you evil
Call you vicious
Sometimes I wish you were any of those things
Then maybe people would believe me
In reality,
You're just someone else
With a case of whipping tongue.

My prayer looks like I stutter in front of the dinner table
My prayer looks like thankyouforthisfoodamen
My prayer looks like gets nervous talking in front of people
My prayer looks like two-faced ***** who can't be trusted
My prayer looks like a God I've been taught not to relate to
My prayer looks like I'm cherry picking the Bible
My prayer looks like justifying my queerness
My prayer looks like I'll die trying
My prayer looks like why is my theology less legitimate than yours?
My prayer looks like wound in the flesh
Looks like begging God to stop boys from abusing me
Looks like begging God to strengthen the tendons in my wrist so I can fight back next time
Looks like begging God to put an end to the next times
My prayer looks like plucking fists out of my father's mouth
My prayer looks like domestic violence is not just physical
My prayer looks like ****** violence is not just ****
My prayer looks like I want to call the boy who assaulted me a ******
My prayer looks like I want a better word for what he did to me
My prayer looks like I wish he hurt me and left cuts and bruises
My prayer looks like maybe then, they would have believed me
My prayer looks trying to explain **** culture to my daddy
My prayer looks like fighting back tears when he says victim blaming is over exaggerated
My prayer looks like fighting back tears when his next sentence is how women need to be more careful instead
My prayer looks like forgetting how to pray
My prayer looks like losing my faith
My prayer looks like mourning for what I have lost
My prayer looks like fearing my father
My prayer looks like loving my father
My prayer looks like I just want someone to believe me
My prayer looks like I've only been taught to be sorry
My prayer looks like it is not my fault anymore
My prayer has been decorated in doilies and daffodils
My prayer is told it's just a little girl, to sit down
My prayer has been told it won't change anything
My prayer holds a loaded gun
My prayer can change the world
My prayer isn't sorry anymore
My prayer isn't sorry.

I am sitting in a classroom during my freshman year of college
Reading about **** and infidelity
Western literature,
Where Jupiter can **** virgins for sport
Where Hamlet can assault Ophelia
And it's okay because he is pretending to be insane.
I see my assailant's face in Hamlet's
The boy who told me he was sorry six months later
Because he had been dealing with some things in his head
I see my assailant's hands in Zeus's
At seven years old, clearly a ******
But you can use my tongue as a gag
As you cause me to choke on my pleas for peace
You see, throughout the ages
Women have had their tongues used as gags
And as nooses
Like when Maya Angelou writes about taking back her body
We say it is ******
When Maya Angelou writes about ****
We rip her words from school curriculums
When Ovid writes about ****
We say it is literature
When women write **** into the folds of their skin
We call them attention ******
When men pen abuse onto paper
We say it is eloquent
Say it is mythology
Watching a friend get brutally drugged and date ***** is no myth
Burning her ******'s name out of her mouth is no myth
Replaying my own movie of childhood abuse at seven
And assault at sixteen is no myth
We treat women's narratives of violation as stories
Just ask Bill Cosby.
As I am forced to read about my own history for entertainment
As I hear my father say how college girls cry **** to get attention
That they should be more careful
How am I supposed to trust my own memory?
When everything around me tells me
I am lying
How am I supposed to trust my own experience?
My tongue keeps getting stuck inside of itself when I try to tell my story
Because I fear people will not believe me
Maya Angelou writes that she knows why the caged bird sings
But I know what keeps it silent.