Have you ever seen your breakup
At the bottom
Of a toilet bowl

Last night i treated myself
To a three-course meal
Of mustard, spit, and toilet water splashback

Have you ever reached into the back
Of your throat with spider fingers
Digging for the right language
To communicate your pain
Spoiler alert: you won’t find it down there

But you will find:
Thick mucus
Strings of blood
Nail polish chips
And stripped knuckle-skin

And every time you pummel your four longest fingers
Back-and-forth against the back of your gag reflex
You’ll be pushing yourself deeper
Into the grave that nobody knew you were digging

Don’t ask me how I feel about food
because you’ll find yourself lost in stories
that glorify pathological eating patterns.
Yes, I am a loud-mouthed *******.
Yes, I will tell you
about the time all I ate on a Wednesday
was a single mustard packet
and you better believe I held the near-empty plastic sleeve
under my desk
ripped it open
and brought the splayed-out wrapper to my lips.

How about the Saturday night my roommate left
for her boyfriend’s house.
I waited for the sound of her car
pulling out of the driveway
then spent the next two hours
eating bowl after bowl of frosted cereal
and throwing them up one after another
until I couldn’t feel my jaw.

Your voice floods my ears
At 6:45 A.M.,
"Patient Number Four, it's time
to do your vitals."

I'm standing in the doorframe
of my hospital cubicle--
right hand in yours, the nurse's,
left hand in the shredder--
or is that the wire frame that's holding
me up like I'm a head on a stake?

"Have you eaten, how long has it been now?"
I try to tell you the truth, but my mouth feels miles away, riding on the train
that you people call my throat.
And my throat has brought me here, to your pristine prison cell because
I betrayed it too many times.

"I need to get your vitals, will you come with me?"
And how do I know, how do I really know
that you are not trying to ****** me
with gleaming round numbers
and records of compliance, cooperation.
How do I know that you are not trying to re-name me in this hospital's file-cabinet language?

"I need you to follow me to the lab."
Why are you trying to take me away
from myself?--
The self I spent so many years
constructing from the bits and pieces
of black earth I dug up eagerly, fearlessly.

I cannot move to your white room--
the other flavor of white reserved
for nurses, not the oatmeal in my cubicle.
I cannot leave this arm with its chewed-up edges or this crime-scene throat
with its flapping lid.

"Please give me your arm and make a fist."
I already told you, or tried to,
I cannot give myself to you.
I have given myself away too many times
under too many names.
And I am tired, so tired,
of chasing myself back to Me.

So you drain me right there in the hallway
and seal me back up
without a kiss--
So I kiss myself on the thick vein you chose and whisper
my real name to myself
Because I am terrified, so terrified
of forgetting it.