I get lost in my work.
Hungry again, I note.
The cycle restarts.
Better this time, I hope.

I find some good food,
Making sure to choose carefully,
And snag my water,
An essential, soon, you’ll see.

I avert my gaze—
I fear they’re all eyeing me—
And sit myself down
For a ritual eternity.

Many meals are Hell;
My body a warzone.
What you’ve learned to nurture so
Still hates you to the bone.

I accept this task I must master;
‘Twas not a choice I made.
It’ll stick with me for life;
‘Cause it’s one my genes gave.

The first taste is bliss,
But most bites bring pain quickly.
Size portions correctly;
So tired of feeling sickly.

Pain sears my throat,
So, I chew with vigor.
The swelling is fast;
I pray my water’s quicker.

The drink spells relief,
But every bite’s anxious,
Every swallow torment;
Each pause between captious.

Another meal unfinished; bitter defeat,
The peace remains unreachable.
I craved it so badly, and I was so close,
Now it looks repulsive; uneatable.

I check the scale once more,
So, skinny I remain;
Been mocked and critiqued
For weight, unable to gain.

I am Sisyphus ‘til sated,
The table is my hill,
Sustenance my stone,
And my mind is my will.

I get lost in my work.
Hungry again, I note.
The cycle restarts.
Better this time, I hope.

I hate
The stabbing feeling
At my food and water’s gate
Into my body.
Hate dealing
With the bacteria in me
When their arrows
Are pointed in that narrow,
Singular spot
When anything cold or hot
Just hurts. Please
Leave me alone; no lease
Was signed before
You declared war
On the space
That wasn’t yours
In the first place.

There is the time when life flourishes;-
and only but a second when it all vanishes
A winter loveless; makes itself cold – needless,
airless, so emotionless- for is the state of the heart
after sudden loss.

The loss of someone, the loss of love,
the loss of dreams, the loss of time, the loss of faith,
and tragically the loss of hope; - that loveless winter
embraces your mind in a heart’s grief.

You seem afraid, so afraid to break the silence;
still, you can hear your bones break in despair –
and oh despair, “you have choked me in my heart,
banished me - I feel your hand squeezing my trivial
heart made of a speck; sometimes it’s crystal or metal,
nonetheless, it all will break.”

Though suddenly, I snap awake - perhaps it was
just all a dream; - a fierce winter to recall.
It was more, for the somebody taking everything I love,
were my own hands, around the throat of everything
I held dear- all I thought I had lost.

I hear there’s no flesh in heaven. But I stopped worshipping the moon because its swell glares like a cruel rendering of your throat, and why should I kneel before a cold imitation when you exist flushed and undimmed for revering.

I heard (thought, once) that the carnal and the holy are indistinguishable in their earth-bound forms. in darkness your throat rises serpentine, devilish beneath the flesh. The night wails; isn’t the moon just the whitened fingertip of Michealangelo’s god, pale with aching in its strain towards Adam?

The blood moon tempts: a tender body, the forbidden fruit, and your mouth trembles in wanting. I’d like to think your throat would gleam in devouring, tossed back defiantly beneath the glaring moonlight; holiness only reflecting off the carnal; god, forsaken.

-Ari

Snakes won't cross a braided rope,
so I take the leads up from around my bed.
I remember her face-
bright and
smiling beside mine
white as if she had just shed a skin
and the dunes grow now over the urchin barrens,
a desert in the sea.
I can peer beneath the 3rd lid
my heart claws at my throat,
allergy tight from the judging shade of
green.
The 3rd lid opens over the Taklamakan,
Tibetan horns sound so old -
ancient vagus nerve endings in my throat but my heart claws them away.
Snakes won't cross a braided rope but
her eyes are green and we lay a
cottonmouth skin across her womb.
All I see are diamonds on the ring fingers.