If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that blood speaks in run on sentences,
Slick syllables flow out of damaged veins like rabid speech
And end in ellipses promising that more will be forthcoming.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that antibacterial soap could never wash the sins out
Enough to make me the saint they always hoped I'd be,
And I am steeped in "nice girl" expectations that never came to fruition.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that my brain went to battle with my body at the age of 12,
And now my eyes have seen more than my heart can hold,
So I keep my emotions locked up like prisoners of war,
Hoping that solitary confinement will lessen their ability to contuse my soul.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that guitar strings leave calluses but release heartache,
That music and poetry are borne of the same cloth and stitch the same wounds.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that I've been trying to stitch my own wounds
Since I was a little girl,
Confused and afraid in a world that tried to **** all that was beautiful and different about her.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that this body loves to twirl and flap and rock, and shimmy,
That I am a perpetual motion machine designed to move with the tune of my own feet.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you I've made some ugly scars and beautiful art,
That the line between the two is proportional to my pain threshold.
Sometimes suffering demands that my hands commit crimes against my skin,
But I've learned that I can bleed ink instead of blood.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that I am often overwhelmed by the darkness of the night sky,
The way the blackness encroaches on the moonlight,
But there's no eloquent speech to convey the way the stars ignite hope in my chest,
Kindle optimism in my heart.
I am desperate to hold on to it.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that I am sometimes so human it cuts me,
But I am learning how to exist within that humanity.
If my hands could talk,
They'd end this poem in a semi colon
Because there's still so much they have to say;

i cannot seem to forget
the smallness i had become.
bruised thighs
and sunken eyes
were my reality;
my skin was devoid of
any nutrients,
fragile and delicate.
i could vanish
into nothingness
like quicksand.

my days bled into
one another,
fingers frozen,
heart barely beating,
lungs hardly breathing.
i stared down the
barrel of the gun,
wished to purge my urges,
sat in an endlessly deep
pool of misery until
drowning was all i could do.

i replaced food with air,
consuming empty calories
and dug knives into
my skin as a personal hobby.

i am an open would
that never heals,
and i am desperate
to move on.

I write to stay alive,
To release the words that tear my flesh
In their efforts to be born into this world.
I write to leave my mark on the universe
Rather than leaving marks on my skin.
I write to prevent the silence from strangling me
In its utter oppressiveness.
I write to wash the sins out of my body
And the stains off of my hands.
I bleed ink rather than blood
And wax poetic to avoid coveting new scars.
I write because it's the only way I've ever learned
To externalize the humanity that cuts me so deeply.
I write because language saves me from myself.
I write because my very existence depends on it.

I am so lost
In a world that demands I always know
What path my feet pound.
I am seeing ghosts in the mirror,
Memories that follow me
Like I am some sort of light leader.
My face no longer looks the same.
It's shadowed by this sadness,
And I am so tired of feeling like the undead,
Wishing the "un" had never existed in the first place.
I am so lost in a dream I cannot wake up from,
Floating through the air in a twisted mesh of unreality.
I am so lost.
I am so lost.

I've got the January blues,
The Monday heaviness,
A kind of Tuesday Sadness.
I've got the Wednesday empties,
The Thursday lonelies,
And a Friday full of Madness.
Saturdays are cold and grey
While Sundays seem to slip away,
And the week recycles into blandness.

Ed is beckoning me.

You could be lighter, thinner, better.
Feel those powerful bones.
Feel the control, the achievement.
This body is yours to hone.

No fat jiggling on your body
Firm skin and muscle is all
Feeling wispy, light and airy
Wonderful and small.

I just want to be thinner.

---

Girls across the world wishing for this
As they scroll through unlimited feeds
Young and impressionable
Fairly easy to do
Just don't eat.

But it can become an obsession,
Always wanting more
Always an imperfection to fix
Just another pound more

Diet, diet, diet.
Eat this, not that.
No carbs, no sugar, no processed food.
Keto helps get rid of fat.
The messages are relentless
They're everywhere we look.
We are so obsessed with our bodies
Diet culture has us hooked.

I worry about the younger generation
More exposure to images of thin
Sharing tips for what to eat in a day
Eating bread considered a sin.

That path leads to destruction.
A trap that holds you tight.
Where your world revolves around food and exercise
Though you feel depressed and lose sight.
Something you can't snap out of
Will almost take your life
As anxiety and depression consume you
But you just can't take one more bite.

We need to start glorifying balance
More images of normal people.
Rewire the way we think about food and exercise
Something more in the middle.

I'll continue to not listen to my thoughts
Though some days they scream very loud.
I don't need to be smaller.
I need to raise my voice and be proud

I wish that I could trust my brain
To, at the very least, remain the same,
Forever wed to depression's corner.
In the dark, growing colder.
But now Paranoia like a flower blooms,
And I hear the footsteps as he haunts my room,
Breathes down silky skin of neck
To prove he's there and away I shan't get.
His shadow lurks around every turn,
And he taints the world with smells that burn.
I am lonely in this terror
Of stalker and murderous specter.
I tell them he's coming to get me,
But alas, only I can see him.
I wish that I could trust my brain,
But it makes monsters all the same.

Yesterday I looked at myself in the mirror
And although I tried to take the advice given to me by my therapist
I was unable to find a single thing I might even just tolerate about myself.
Instead, my mind and heart raced each other, trying to see who would win the prize of defeating me
as I scan my naked body for each and every inconsistency and insufficiency.

You see my first memory of self hatred comes from a place most people could not predict.
Imagine me at six years old standing in the shower, so proud of myself
For finally graduating from the bathtub I had associated with childhood.
I had just finished reading “Falling Up” by Shel Silverstein.
And out of the more than 400 poems by this poet one stuck to my brain
Like peanut butter on the roof of my mouth after eating a PB&J.

Now if you’ll forgive me for getting off track for just this moment
I’d like to read you this poem entitled “Scale.”

“If I could only see the scale,
I’m sure that it would state
That I’ve lost ounces...maybe pounds
Or even tons of weight.
‘You’d better eat some pancakes-
You’re skinny as a rail.’
I’m sure that’s what the scale would say…
If only I could see the scale.”

If you’ve ever read a poem by Shel Silverstein you’d know that each of them
Are accompanied by an illustration.
This particular poem is positioned next to a drawing of a person standing on a scale
Unable to see the number because their stomach juts out just far enough
To block their view of the information that scale is providing.
I remember looking down at my naked body
Only to realize that i also could not see my feet.
My childish, growing, prepubescent tummy obstructed my view of my toes.
And I remember thinking for the first time, “Wow, I am fat.”
And that same feeling has followed me throughout these subsequent years.
Throughout elementary, middle, high school and beyond.
My dysmorphic perspective has been a shadow of which I could not shake.
And try as I might, deep down I knew that this was my fate.

I started restricting what I ate starting in 6th grade.
-I counted calories lost and gained and measured my size by the tightness of a tank top.
I watched videos of people like Eugenia Cooney,
and inspired myself through the photos I saw of
Emaciated girls kept alive by feeding tubes.
I was 12.
-I was diagnosed with Ee Dee En Oh Ess in the summer of seventh grade.
EDNOS is a catch-all eating disorder characterized by the characteristics you lacked
To be able to gain the coveted name brand DSM-5 diagnosis of anorexia.
-This I considered to be my failure.
To not qualify because of a lack of being underweight was all I needed for motivation.
So I doubled down on my efforts to lose weight and by the age of fourteen
I had finally achieved that which I so...craved.
I was the best. The skinniest. The one people whispered about in the halls and I had all the attention I could ever dream of getting.
And I was happy.
Wasn’t I?

Skip ahead to now and you will know my comeback story.
Seven years of weekly therapy, numerous psych ward stays, and one near-death experience
I can finally say that I am at a stable and healthy weight.
I continue to despise my body, but now I have the tools and mechanisms to be able to fight off the demon I had nicknamed “Ana”.
-And while I still cannot say that I truly love myself the way I am,
Slowly and steadily I continue to improve.
And I hope that one day I can look into that mirror, take in all my flaws and still be able to tell little 6 year old Grace…
“Sweet girl, you will be okay”.