My aunt likes to tell this story / where her and my grandma used to have this vibrant garden / and she'd make salsa out of the Crimson tomatoes / from the crops. / one time when I was two / she / made this spicy salsa / and I / ate the whole *** of it / before/ she could catch / me
I am two / with hungry eyes / and a raging tongue.
I am sixteen / and I know every time I hear my / parents yelling or / my dad angrily snapping at my mom or / my heart like explosion in my body / killing everything around it / because I know the fire in his voice is about me
Our tongues both bleed Crimson / both hold salsa in our cheekbones.
Our tongues collide inconveniently / now every time I am home from college / I wonder when I'll be kicked out or / wonder if I should leave my room or / wonder if I should drive away / make example out of my dripping body / cut open my skin and bleed my overwhelmed corpse of its screaming / parts
Body, fueled by rage / family, fueled by fire / just like / my tastebuds and / my / yearnings.

They never put trigger warnings on mushroom fields
On big houses in the country
With lots of rooms that can swallow you whole
They will claim you as food to feed the mouths of their lions
Who will name you victim
Name you child
I, I was a child
When you painted your name across my body in blood
And I said no
I said no
But I did what you asked of me
Always so eager to please
Good girl
Good dog
Fetch it.
We socialize little girls to submit
Submit
Submit
And you're the polite child
Until your identity is wrapped up in staying silent
Because the most interesting part about you
Cannot be spoken out loud
The most interesting part about you
Is the game you play with another person
Is flying out of your body when he grooms you
Flying is a super power, baby
You have magic in your fingertips
That's why he mistakes you for someone older
Eleven years later, I find myself crying in a closet
You branded me with victim
Yet I have survivor tattooed on my bare skin
Every bit of my human says
Child and adult alike shout
"I should be over this"
Two parts, constantly in conflict
Agree that I should forget an entire part of my life
That shattered me before I had the tools I needed to reassemble the pieces
Surviving means there will be months where I am fine
And then trigger warning I smell the stale stench of mushrooms
Or trigger warning get lost in the rooms of my labyrinth mind
And I am right back in that bed again
Why do I always need something to hold onto?
My father says I make up reasons to be depressed
But honestly, I make trophies out of reasons to recover
Elevated high on the mantle
Every day I see a new one
And I'm not saying everyone can reclaim this easily
Because I thinks that's a lie we tell people like me
Without understanding how much there is below the surface
But I know I had to take this back in order to grow and bloom
And I remember:
Pretty, no, pretty strong girl
No, pretty strong woman
You are surviving this nightmare
You are surviving this
You are surviving.

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.