"I love food too much to be anorexic.
Thats the thing,
Anorexics love food.
But with anorexia,
Food is no longer,
Texture,
Smell,
Warmth,
Energy,
Taste.
Food becomes numbers,
Calories,
1000.
800.
600.
200.
Until Calories,
Become chemicals.
Sugar Free Jelly,
Pepsi Max,
Low fat ice-cream.
...
NOTHING.

Anorexia is not about a love,
It is about a hate.
An over-whelming hatred.
For your body,
For your faults,
For yourself.

Starving is merely a symptom.
Too many work out sessions is merely a symptom.
Your thoughts are a poison.
Not your acts."

My name is Athena Grace and I have battle anorexia for 4 years.
I am 16 years old.
At the age of 12 years old my idea of beauty was constructed into something toxic.

On my 12th birthday I was 5'2 and a beautiful 134 pounds.
On my 13th birthday I was 5'3 1/2 and a sliming 112 pounds.
On my 14th birthday I was 5'5 and a stick thin 100 pounds.
On my 15th birthday I was in the hospital. I was 5'5 1/2 and 89 pounds.
On my 16th birthday I was 5'6 and 118 pounds.
I am halfway to my 17th birthday and I am 5'7 feet tall and 105 pounds.
I was getting bad again.
I refuse to get bad again.
I am my own savior, and that is what I have learned.
I will recover.
I will never look at food like you do, but that is okay.

When a rain-storm surprised the city
Passers-by looked down with pity
At a large group of nutters
Inspecting the gutters
An unfortunate planning committee.

They decided today was good timing
Below-streets they soon were climbing
Where the gutters connect
To the sewers they checked
And all got a very good sliming.

Loving me is hell and hell is dense
And hell is heavy
And hell is hot
Dense with the influx of passing souls
That nudge elbows of their brother sinners
In tight elevators that hum not
Piano music but drums so loud
They convert heart beats to 808 rhythms
They shake the victims of vices so
Hard the change falls from their pockets
And bounces back up into their eyes
Hell is heavy
It is heavy with the weight of lies
And of the truths of passions sought and met
With only finger tips and white lips
The vicious bosses of mobs
And the cemented feet of snitches caught
Hell is dense
It is packed tighter than fingers in fists
Clenched fixed on righting wrongs
The air there is hot with breathes
Held in and finally released with
The unbuttoning of sliming corporate tuxes
Fastened inside out so the brass buttons brand and burn
The business boys’ bantam bodies
While they look up at the men the tired to measure up to
But where always a stich or two short
Hell is hot
Hot and steaming with the blood of the corrupt
That was spilt and then encountered a tilt
Down a funnel mixed with rotten oil
Left stagnant by sinners that sought not
To move a finger to clean up that gunk
The steam from sinners water not sweat
Boil sweet and steamy up into the
Mouths of men with jaws wired open
And rested on their bellies that are propped up
By guns taking all that is sweet for themselves
This is hell
This, like me,
Feels tastes sounds and smells
Of dense hot and heavy
Sins deadly appealing
And dammingly just.

lead us to think there is no planning,
no list of instructions, therefore no
notes on mending.

so we stick it, wipe it, cough
dificulties into craw, sliming over
the worst of it.

without the light on things look worse,
leaning over carefully, flick a switch,
listen to the news.

all things combined,
leads to variety in puddings.

sbm.

My spotlight fades and the crowd explodes.

Inner ear thoughts question my presentation and I wonder if my stance was too shifty. I wonder how my poem affected you.
I wonder if it rippled through the wrinkles in your brain as brightly and loudly as the thunderous applause under hot lights.

Tantalizing the open door of your bigotry I find my words sliming at my feet. A puddle of what I intended absorbing itself back into me. I feel it rush in between my toes, injecting itself into my veins and feigning euphoria.

My fingertips glide through the air with the high from my poetry gnashing around in my skull. But it's not a gleeful bouncing of anxious excitement.

The pounding in my head is muffled by the compliments. The sound of all my strife, drowned out by the burning visage of my ethereal form.  A spectre of me standing on stage.

And as I find my seat, and the clapping dies. We see another ghost on stage,

The light shining past him. And his words all plaster themselves to the ceiling and begin melting from the bulbs. Dripping down slowly on the audience.

When it's finally all dropped off the ceiling, the crowd will be gone. And none will remember how a rainbow of words stained their plate glass eyes. They blink and it's washed away, drained into the sewer of passing ideas. The water reflecting angry Facebook rants and precious moments with loved ones.

My eyes see god in the spotlight when the microphone sets before me. My words are only made for the light, they fade as they make their way up to god. No substance to carry them as they dissipate.

The next time we meet, I may be someone else.
 
Extra thick, light in weight.
Resourced to fit purpose.
 
The next time we meet,
I may be a splint. Easy to light.
The next time we meet.
Would silence truly do us justice.
Learning to cope before given reason.
 
Rounded off at the top, rough patterns felt between us both.
A spark that ignites the scrape of when I fell for you.
 
We stood there because we knew how we felt, we never truly understood.
Collecting ourselves in abrupt fire. Only a fool would stand to wither completely.
 
What else did we truly know but to extinguish ourselves in the same abrupt manner.
Breathing in each others essence. Stained in soot.
 
We lived in sulfur, sliming down in the same instance.
 Lighting myself before becoming contagious.
I thought this way because it was all I'd ever know

Black snails are drawn
to my vines of green
Sliding so silent
where my vegetables gleam
Slow yet steady,
from my distant dark streams
Running beyond the carrots and peas.
Sliming my spinach
The bottoms unseen
Black snails eat voracious
Till bare earth they leave
Destroying all growth
In my garden of dreams.

Slithery, slimy snakes and snails,
Wriggling, crawling, sliming across
The forest floor in the undergrowth.

Nibbling magic mushrooms, giggling like
Alice in Wonderland.

Buttercups, teacups, all here in the undergrowth, the poet’s imagination.

Robert Frost, lost in woods by a road in the undergrowth.
(Seriously!)

No time to waste, run rabbit run. How the lichen and moss grows so slow and so old.

Robin McNamara

Open your mouth
to find
anything but words
come out.
It stings just the same
as any insult would,
yet see
there is a shape
to these anomalies,
sliming out of your mouth.
Please, for the sake of yourself,
leave the questioning
to the words
that no longer take place
in that mouth.