i put my pen to paper
and try to conjure beauty
but there's nothing beautiful
about yellow teeth
nothing beautiful
about your stomach groaning
in large groups
about falling asleep starving
about eating tissue paper
to stop feeling hungry
nothing beautiful
about looking at an apple and seeing
60 or half an hour of push ups
and not a ******* apple
nothing beautiful
about bleeding knuckles
and pounding heads
about ***** in whatever
hair is left because
it's all on your bathroom floor
about light fur growing on your arms and legs
grown by your body to keep you warm
nothing beautiful
about feeling dizzy, always
about fainting on the treadmill
and getting a rugburn on your face
from the pressure
nothing beautiful
about tubes in your nose
feeding you sugar water
about sharp ankles on cold scales
about needles in arms
about shaking uncontrollably
nothing beautiful
about cold.

and there's nothing beautiful about death.

sometimes, i miss being sick.

i miss the feeling of my sharp ankles on the cold scale. the scale has been hidden from my judgemental eyes.

i miss the automatic caloric calculator, the blinding neon-sign. it's still there, always and impossible to ignore, like television subtitles. but i eat anyway.

i miss the feeling of my jeans becoming baggier around pencil legs. yesterday i had to go to american eagle to buy the same pair of ripped jeans, two sizes larger than what i was a year ago.

i miss the blue polka-dot Tupperware in the farthest corner of my closet that i used to erase the shame of feeling full. i can't have containers anywhere in my bedroom.

i miss the feeling of drinking so much water that my body becomes a shallow pool that my insides float in. i have a limit on the amount of fluids i can consume in a day.

i miss walking into a meal knowing exactly how to eliminate all of it, without question. now when i do behaviors i feel the shame of my whole family in my chest.

i miss karaoke nights. i can't sing any of the songs i did in the hospital. it just feels wrong.

i miss sitting in a circle of other sick girls and forgetting, for a moment. they're in different places all over the world, enjoying life as recovered anorexics.

i miss staying up late talking to my roommate and questioning whether recovery is worth it, or even possible. she's in california with her girlfriend, enjoying being alive.

i miss licking salt of ice cubes. everything is locked into safes.

but mostly, i miss you. you're gone.

.