Don’t you ******* dare to romanticize me Don’t act like my ribs poking through my skin And wrists so frail I’m half-certain they’ll snap too is beautiful Because that’s exactly what you’re doing through your glossy magazine pages and water-and-kale only lunches Making it seem glamorous that I lay dying slowly at my own hands Don’t paint over my sallow complexion And hair falling out in thick strands As I tried to put up a ponytail Here’s my thigh gap (it’s writing my obituary) but isn’t it just #goals Don’t make me the reason a twelve year old girl is squeezing her tummy I did not fall for that trap But I’m in the same pit anyway I am not a costume Not the “**** anorexic” Don’t tell me to learn to take a joke Because it isn’t a joke to make my best friend sick with worry Because the pounds keep peeling off I’ve felt sinking in my (empty) stomach when friends ask me “how do you keep so thin?” in pale green tones of envy when their bodies are so full of life and mine is withering and I’m crying over a stupid ******* bowl of soup that the same girl (but a different one) would have drank in two minutes soaking in the warmth in a full tummy But that I heated in the microwave three, four times, forcing down spoonful by spoonful just to have something in my stomach. I just want to eat pancakes that don’t taste like dust but all my meals are tainted with self hatred and how ******* dare you teach them that hatred like it’s *pretty?