My body sighs when I wake up. Her feet move without prompting on a journey that leads us to the cold measurements of my worth. The first light we see each morning is not that of a  blushing pink sunrise. It is angry and red. It screams at us to wake up from a nightmare we are creating.

She will tell me she’s sorry, that she will change. I’ll tell her it’s alright. We both know I’m lying. I will take us down familiar paths hoping they lead us to different destinations. She will obediently follow, acting as a vessel for my frustration. She is the parchment I use to map out the ugliest parts of my mind.

I will tell her I’m sorry. I wish it could be different. It will be different. She will whisper that it doesn’t have to be this way. I will pretend to believe her.

I will try to love her over breakfast and carefully clothe her in layers meant to protect her from the harsh judgements of others. I tell her that someday the sun will know all the parts of her. She wonders how many parts will have been lost by then. I tell her just a few more.

All day I will twist her into molds that she was never meant to fit. She will do her best but it won’t be enough.

She will ache for rest and care and my thoughts will be screaming. We will stretch and sweat until they are quiet.

We will sit in the dark together, under so many covers and layers we aren’t sure where we end and they begin. I will feel the weight of myself in the mattress and she will apologize. I’ll tell her we can try again tomorrow. She will hope that tomorrow never comes.

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.

I take in your love like fossil fuels

The guilt will **** me faster than
The illness
I wonder what it’d be like to be free
From all of this
Where would you put the sun
If you did not have to hold it up
For me
Every day
Would you rest?

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.

.

I was seventeen,  
when I realized  
I wasn’t beautiful  
in the clothes I wore.  
At the arriving end  
of December–  
before my eighteenth birthday  
I began my sweaty resolution.
It became a song  
forcefully, put on loop
playing again, and again–  
and again.  
I counted units
of food energy  
like beats  
in a measure of time,  
keeping practice logs  
for when I could
eat.
My metronome  
for living,  
was kept in time  
by the syncopated,  
rhythmic beats  
of my breaths
as my feet sped
long into nights  
on machinery  
that went–  
                 nowhere.
Running,
the same line
of track
over, and over.

I took a class a few months back,
it taught me how to drive a vehicle,
the extracurricular activity is Driver's Ed.
I listened well, but I wrote better,
and in the notebooks we were given,
I had written poem after poem,
covering all the whitespace.
About notes for later,
and love that was now
(it still is "now"),
this book is full of literature,
but the actual necessary contents
are one hundred percent
illegible literature.

50 red lines
Etched and sketched across
The canvas in which you live
That was what you left
On the day you said
You’d stop

800 calories
Brittle nails and
An iron deficiency
That was what you left
On the day you chose
Recovery

my fragile skin may never fade
but maybe weeds
can still sprout through
i can paint daisy chains across my scars
and roses in the hollows of my collarbones
wildflowers grow
from the inside out
through cracks in my flesh
and in the valleys between each rib
slow and steady
up my throat until i choke
but that's okay because
at least it wasn't food
i'll swallow bouquets
to keep my starvation in full bloom.

If I think harder do I burn more calories

Does being hot or cold burn more calories

Silent night time exercise

how many calories in
           lexapro
           ibuprofen
           air
           saliva

how many calories did Auschwitz prisoners eat

is diy liposuction possible

what body parts can you live without

could they have poured calories in this water

how to give myself the flu

can thinking about food make you fat

how much does a finger weigh

‘recovery’
tastes like olive oil
and vinegar.
in your kitchen, at 1am
after 2 bags of crisps and vegetables.
tastes like cheap chicken breast
with spicy marinade
from the ****** canteen in college
and m&ms you gave away.
recovery tastes like failure,
like pieces of pizza you weakly stole
from your friends
because you spent your money on hair dye and nail
polish instead.