You have to eat to lose weight you know
It all seems so illogical, feels so illogical
I just want to go to my stomach and pull
Away every morsel until there’s nothing left

Until my body is forced to feed on itself
Gnawing at the fat reserves I know are there
The ones I see staring back at me in the mirror
The ones I know are lurking in between

Hidden crevices I can feel with each fiber
Of muscles intent on movement
And that is where the problem lies, the muscles
My body will be unsatisfied with just the taste of fat

Whatever it can get its grimy taste buds on
Is what it wants– is what it shall have
Until the mirror says I am satisfying enough
Until I open it back up for one more measly molecule

That's when it tricks you and plasters you with fat
A shiny new coat to thicken you back up
Just in case I might starve again
Just in case it needs to lick its insides again

all night my sister
retches in the toilet
a bug crawls around my own stomach
nothing like hers
i sneak into the kitchen
drink madly from her cup
and swallow her half-chewed food.

god i hope i get it.

those 3 middle schoolers got salmonella
from the kebab place down the street
now
no one ever wants to go i understand
but i
stop by as often as i can.

god i hope i get it.

i only ever see her going into or out of the bathroom
eyes welled, teeth yellow, lunch bag empty
i reach inside my throat
i want to be
like her
but tears leak and ***** doesn't.

god i hope i get it.

last night i finally did. i
shoveled food into my mouth, unable to stop until
my vision blurred and when i
knelt down and watched
murky colors mix with the ceramic reflection
i just felt deceived
the bug was still within me
crawling, creeping, ceaseless torture
unwilling to ever leave.

god i hope i lose it.

why must we be
limited
by this creature
we call home?

why do we have to
settle for what
this can do?

why must we go through
so
much
to feel happy?

why do we have to
exist
at all?

why can't we just
go and live
in our dreams?

why do we have to
wake up?

why can't we keep
dreaming?

I don’t mean to undermine your confusion
I don’t know how it feels like when your body is not your body
Every morning when you wake up
Do you feel something is lost or mismatched?
Do you walk towards the mirror and scream in anguish?
“Something is lost, but it was never there in the first place!”
Do you tell people “this is me, but it isn’t me”
You walk through every aisle, looking for an item that fits you
But how do you know what fits, when you have no idea of you
I so want to understand
I want to ask you abcde but worried you might see it as wxyz
I am ill for the third time this month
Not sure if its caused by the heat or the curiosities

This poison you feed me
This head wound
Inflicting and compounding;
You will never understand

You size me up
In funhouse mirrors,
Tape measures all stretched out
Because you hate me
And so I cry

I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
I’m sorry I’m so big
I want to be small
Teach me to be small
Or, instead,
Teach me not to have a face
So you do not see me anymore
Please

The sweetness of a dehydrated body,
Tired, weak, blameless,
Addicted
Downing only buckets of saccharine hatred
It smells like cancer and bubblegum,
And that’s just as well

It tastes like
Blood

Pink athletic shorts
Bursting at the seams
With all this new body
Hips and waist and ***
You said
“It’s about time to retire those don’t you think?”
2 months later
They hang loosely past my hip bones
Hiding the body that dissolved
The person who is no longer there
And I’m glad I kept them
So they could swallow me whole

Write a lament on the fake bathroom tile,
where you waste your father's hard earned money.

As you throw it up in disgrace of your body
and throw your hunger right back in his face,
tell him he's not done enough for his family.

Watch where the truth gets you when you're not allowed to lie.

~ A.M, F.H.

The reflection in the mirror
returns me a sad and forced smile,
the dried-up hair barely catching the light,
and those brown eyes sinking like holes in the ground.

Who could love that face?
With its rough features,
its coarse skin and bent nose.
A pyrrhic beard and that weak chin.

And what about those arms, huh?
Long and thin like church candles,
but with no flare.

Not much of a chest either,
there are gravestones with more bulk,
and people are far happier to see them too.

But above all it’s the barrenness that scares me,
the sinkholes run deep and the candles cold,
and the gravestones go down to the foundations of the world.

The reflection in the mirror returns me.
Nothing