i never understood the phrase
home is where the heart is
until i was shaking on the floor of
my hospital room and it was nothing
but walls
and even when i found the energy to
decorate with cliché little things
like fairy lights, posters, my
skeletal “art”
i felt the room swallow me whole
until i was nothing but a grain of sand
my new roommate was a wrinkly zucchini-girl
and i tried not to speak to her
but we heard each other cry in the night
and we never said a word
but i could feel her eyes on me
a girl down the hall
heard me talking about my addiction and
she told me she would pray for me
later that day she pushed me
into a wall and pressed her
lips against mine
then told me i was tempting her,
i was a sin
just waiting to happen
so i sat in the dark outside her room every
night before i went to sleep
and sometimes she would
come out
and hold my hands
and tell me she loved me

loving an anorexic is hard, i would assume. borderline impossible. how can you love someone who has so much hatred for their body?

my first relationship ended because he was sick of watching me spit pasta into napkins and hide bread in my sleeves
he cheated on me and i watched the most cliché stereotype turn me angry and spiteful
he told me he couldn't love someone who loved their eating disorder more than they loved him

i want to be angry about this, but i can't
he was right. i was always going to choose ed over him
i would rather die from starvation than let go of my eating disorder for him

in that sense, he wasn't the only one who cheated.

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.

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.

when nothing-girl met everything-girl,
the world broke open
and their fingers intertwined subconsciously
and they looked into the core of earth
and laughed together at the irony of it all

nothing-girl put down her grandmother's blade
and used her right hand to instead hold everything-girl's
their laughter rang out across the valleys
echoed in caves and through churches
and god stared down at them as they pressed their lips together

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.

.

fingers ice cold
identity pinned on arbitrary digits
spilling the rotten flowers from her insides
counting pumps of panic juice
one, two, three. not enough.
she scrubs until her hands are red and raw.
four, five, six. they're not clean enough just yet.
waking up freezing and covered in sweat,
voice filling up volumes,
feeling every person who has ever
touched her skin.
sitting and shaking in spanish class,
quietly looking up the number of sleeping pills she needs
to get into her wretched body
in order to disappear forever.
craving the feeling of the cold blade on her hot skin
the red ribbons erupting onto her sheets
blinding anger, sadness, grief turns to
physical pain
staring at "severely underweight bmi" girls
scribbling on her injured wrist what she needs
to get to that point. she's almost there.
**** yourself. **** yourself. **** yourself, she writes.
**** yourself. **** yourself. **** yourself. **** yourself.
one day, she breaks,
dying a thousand deaths as sirens wail
peeling the tape off the IV they attached to her vein
hearing her mother cry
liver damage. severe blood loss. hallucinations. stitches necessary. psych ward? she's convulsing. must be in shock.
finding herself surrounded by broken girls and boys
in a white-walled facility
made for lunatics, just like her.
smiling through session after session until they say,
she's ready.
scraping through as she plans
how to keep the dead flowers just for herself.
months later, finding herself
in another home for lunatics
tiny quiet shaking girls just like her
being fed sugar water through her nose
on her eighth day, saying
a single first word to her therapist.
okay.
sharing a room with a wrinkly zucchini of a girl
turning pink and crying when
the soft soul walks in the room,
finally giving her a beautiful flower to hold.
all her hidden blossoms spilling out of her chest
ugly, shameful plants finally revealed
for the first time in many moons,
she's no longer ashamed of them.
falling in love with the girl two doors over,
erupting into giggles
sneaking around the milieu wearing
rose coloured-glasses,
fingers intertwined.
sitting in a circle of winter girls,
our flowers resting on our laps,
our fingers warmed by
the touch of one another.

asleep - the smiths
i'm in love with u, sorry - j'san
tonight you belong to me - nicole sidney
the bad list - z berg, ryan ross
i fall for the same face every time - z berg
we almost nailed it - z berg
bubble gum - clairo
she - dodie
girl - the beatles
here, there and everywhere - the beatles
something - the beatles
the long and winding road - the beatles
watch you sleep. - girl in red
i wanna be your girlfriend - girl in red
4am - girl in red
build me up buttercup - lara anderson
broken (acoustic) - lovelytheband
crush culture - conan gray
strawberry kisses - olivia herdt
slow dance - adventure time, olivia olson
the record player song - daisy the great
breathe me - sia
love like you - steven universe, rebecca sugar
love like you (reprise) - steven universe, rebecca sugar
asleep - the smiths

i'm turning into
the skeleton that i see
in my closet

i am suspended
in a space
between what was
and what could be

two girls ran under the bridge, fingers intertwined
the ***** of their feet swept the concrete floor
their laughter filled up volumes
louder than the cars speeding through the night
louder than the church bells across the town
but they knew they were there.

it's in the far end of my closet
hidden under piles of folded knit blankets
shoved behind years of ****** art projects
alongside broken pencils and pieces of lint

despite being concealed
it stands out like a blinding neon sign
the unseen bits of food hidden by airtight plastic
my eating disorder salvaged in one piece of me

i haven't opened the
mold-encrusted capsule
since 2018.
maybe i never will.

today is a Gone day
the kind of day where i can't
see past the blood on my fingertips
the kind of day where standing up
or thinking too long
makes my chest ache

today the world outside my thoughts
is cloudy and irrelevant
i want to sleep but my head is too loud
i can't even speak over the deafening sounds
those wretched voices reminding me
that i'll never be enough

today I can't leave my room
reality slips under me and i'm in a Gone world
my senses evaporate and i'm left in my head,
alone, again

today will disappear from my memory
in the stream of coming days
it's already starting to slip away
one moment, and it's Gone.

"i'm sorry. i don't feel
the same way."
i just smile and
nod my head
"i know."

i was not made
for you, darling
nor you for me

we are nothing more
or less
than trains on a highway,
speeding in
different directions,
brushing each other
just for
a moment

you left your handprint
on my heart
and i will cherish it
as i make room for new lovers

i will never stop
wanting to hold you
but little by little,
it will start to
hurt less.

i will not grow up, not ever! i will stay in my yellow house with my mummy and daddy and we will love each other forever. my sisters and me will play pretend all day and eat cookies if we feel sad. i will become a teacher like mrs. lewis but i will give all of my students extra playtime and let them know that i'm secretly a kid too. my daddy tells me that one day i will leave my house and go to college, and my granny tells me that she will die one day. when they say those things it scares me but it also feels too far away to matter! and i know if those things happen i will just eat ice lollies and reverse it with my secret witch powers. i want to be so many things, and i will be if i believe! i want to be a mermaid on a magical island and make friends with all the human children. i want to live in the jungle and have a huge tiger who will be my best friend and let me ride on his back. i want to be a ballerina quite a lot, but my daddy says all they eat is salad, and although i really love salad, i really really like burgers and ice cream too. my daddy knows so much. someday i will know as much as him but i will still be a kid. when i bring home good marks, my daddy says he is proud of me. i like it when he says he's proud of me. everything will stay exactly how it is, forever!

if my body disintegrated
and blew away with the wind you called wretched
leaving only dust and
memories and feelings
and the vague thought of my hand in yours
would you miss me?
would you even notice?

one day i will show you
the world hidden under my chest
until then, rest easy, my love.
the stories will come in time
sleep in my arms and wait with me
until that day

if i unwrapped
your heart
peeled off its thick coating
brushed away the decay that haunts
your mind when you close your hazel eyes
what would i see
when i looked
inside?

a fresh, crisp morning.
the smell of leaves.
dandelions brushing my chin.
cherishing these things,
i tilt my head back
to see the vast, open sky.
a drop of cold water
gently hits my face
and i laugh
a laugh that breaks the world open
and i can see everything inside
the beauty i am surrounded by.
i feel everything and i'm here.
there's something in stating the obvious, i think.
before there's a flash of red
and blinding pain
and its over.

i can see it
for a split second
when our eyes meet

she is broken

but so, so complete.

i don't want to die,
but i don't want to live either.
isn't that such
a nice
thought?