Seen from ground below
Under flower's downward gaze
Hidden smile grows

Winter moves by slowly.
I wrap myself in your stanzas.

A silence with you
Is not
a silence

But a moment rich
with peace

will I put lipstick on you  
when you lay still and silent
as the last morning
  
or will you pull the sheet
over my face gently  
with a surprised sense of relief  
when my final breath
marries the gray air
  
will it be in the room
where we slept
under the watchful eye
of children and grandchildren
their timeless images nailed to the walls  
ever present but mute
while they navigated worlds  
with horizons we would never see

or would it be in the
hallowed house of hospice
where palliative words like
“we will miss you”
“not long now,”
“you can go, it’s OK,”
float above the beds  
like birds stalled in flight  
riding unseen currents, but
soon to swoop down
to perch on mystic memories,
briefly,
before flying into
the karmic night

well not really… though I told
every grinning green Catholic soul
at my school I did that and more

I did smell the wine on her breath
and watch her trip into the trailer  
her gown hitting the floor  
before she closed the door  
her body as white as the fake snow  
spitting onto the set, and
as cold perhaps

I was sixteen and she was fifty one  
this was my one and only, her last,  
flick, not fling, though I would have
cut off an arm for it to have been so  
not the arm she touched  
in our one immortal scene together…  
her electric hand,  
all the blond hairs on my forearm standing at attention  
me wondering if the camera caught
their helpless vertical veer  

it mattered not, most of the scene
landed not on the screen, but
the cutting room floor, my two lines slashed to one  
my 48 seconds with her shaved to 22

I did not cry when I heard she died,
twenty months later, but my lie seemed soiled  
once she was in the ground
I confessed to Father Ryan  
he was silent when
I asked what to tell  
the fools who believed  
the dying star lay with me  
simply because she said,  
“Call me Vivien, not Ms Leigh”

You say, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”
but I say surely something

must taste nicer than the burning acid
being forced back up your throat.

Why not hug people instead of
toilet bowls? At least they’ll hug back.

Except Mia is your only friend now.
And her cousin, Ana, of course.

And I understand that you never
wanted to die, but this is a thousand ton truck

hurtling towards the edge of a cliff and
Ana took the wheel a long time ago.

There is no strength in this: in you, in a
fear of calories. Even your bones creak

as your muscles sigh with exhaustion -
for this, is not a war you're winning.

This is a battle with only one contender
and I will not be the one to disarm you.

That's your job and it always has been. I know
you only wanted to be beautiful

like all those stars in the magazines
you saved under a file titled ‘thinspo’

but the only stars you ever saw were in
your eyes from the dizziness

and to tell you the truth, you are not pretty.
For there is nothing “pretty”

about the layer of fuzz your body grew
to protect itself from the big bad wolf

when really, the only growl was coming
from inside your stomach.

Or how your little sister is afraid to touch,
let alone hug you, in fear of snapping you in two.

For there is no glamour in having to
remove clumps of hair out of the plughole

at least six times whilst having a shower,
just to let the water run down.

Or that one time you "accidentally”
took too many laxatives. Messy.

There is nothing admirable about the way
you sat shivering on your bed

at night instead of kissing boys,
or dancing, or eating ice cream.

There is nothing to be marvelled at
in dying.

This, is not a life to be lived.
God, this isn't even a life.

This is being a slave to your own body,

a walking zombie, a ghost stuck
between two sides.

You are not alive.

But it was all still worth it, right?
Slowly killing yourself from the inside out.

A small price to pay for perfection,
a bargain for a broken mirror;

for a half-written book
with 97 blank pages,

a camera
that only captures in black and white,

a clock
with frozen hands.

And most importantly, for a peace of mind
you never received.

No refunds.