Don’t stand for too long
Or even wiggle
Because that's exercise
And exercising is a behavior
Unless it’s time for the daily walk;
Then you must go
Even if it hurts and you feel like a dog
On an invisible leash.
Never spend too much time alone
In a room away from the people you barely know
With whom you are stuck all day and night and
Forced to share toilets and
Puked-in shower drains and
Cramped kitchen counters and
Painful secrets you wouldn’t even tell your mother.
Precious heartbeats spent alone
Are called isolating and they are bad.

A smear of avocado hastily forgotten on a butter knife
Raises suspicion and a quarter teaspoon more must be replaced.
But heaven help you
If you pour a milliliter too much orange juice.
This is disordered behavior
And the few offending drops must be poured out.
Time will teach you
That wholesome rosy-faced girls much younger than you are
Holding clipboards with your life on them
Will treat you like a child
And disregard your hard-earned quarter-century
As a fish disregards an airplane.
Black tea past three o’clock is criminal;
It must be eschewed
Lest the minuscule amount of caffeine
Affect your sleep eight hours before bedtime
And override the Seroquel and the Ambien and the lithium.

And don’t you ever shut the door or flush the toilet
‘Til they’ve come in
To ogle your **** and ****
And when you’ve finally proven yourself trustworthy enough
To shut the door and flush
Never stay in for more than three minutes,
Even when taking a dump.
You will be suspected of purging
And you will be grilled like that eggplant you didn’t taste
Until you beg them to take your blood and say
Please please check the electrolytes and the pH
And I will even *** in a cup!
I don’t care! I just need you to know
I’m telling the truth.
And never say you feel sick to your stomach
Especially when it’s true.
That’s just an excuse people like us use
When we want to yodel to God
On the big white telephone.

Thirty seconds stolen in your room
To brush unruly hair is forbidden
Unless your waist-length hair
Is nearing dreadlock status
Because you might be Up To Something in there.
You can say **** but not fat
Unless you are justifying a tablespoon
Of Catalina dressing
To the Food Police.
You can’t have a hand mirror because
You might smash it and hurt yourself
But you will be surrounded
With lovely, breakable little picture frames
Full of inspirational quotes.

If you’re upset at dinner
It’s called anxiety.
If your heart hurts and skips beats
From years of puking your guts up every day,
It’s called anxiety.
If you need your space
It’s called anxiety.
If you can’t meditate
And you get so bored that
You let a juicy pregnant wolf spider crawl
Over your hand and arm seventeen times
And instead of OM SHANTI OM your inward chant
Is I Am The Walrus
It’s anxiety.
If you tell them you’re not anxious
It’s anxiety.

You can’t have your wallet
And your phone at the same time
So you’re less likely to run away
But they never check to see
Where your debit card and ID went off to
When you trade in your wallet for your phone.
They never notice the triumphant curve on your lips
Nor the slight stiff rectangle
In the breast pocket of the flannel shirt
That is perpetually around your waist.
You will keep these with you
All day and all night
In case someone drives the final corkscrew
Into your ear and you must vamoose
Before you find yourself
Floating white-knuckled in a deluge of blood
Grasping a cheese grater
Surrounded by seeping lumps of people meat.

But this house models the real world.
You are sick and you have no idea
What’s best for you.
After three weeks they know
Exactly how you work
And if you don’t agree with that
You are wrong.
You will relapse one day.
If you don’t agree with that,
You’re wrong and you will die
Because you can never quit cold turkey with food.

You must learn to enjoy the food
That you fight and claw and scramble to make,
To enjoy each perfectly metered tablespoon
Of peanut butter,
To delight in hastily and stressfully prepared dishes
Upon which you are terrified to put condiments
For fear of being told the selection is inappropriate,
To relish weak iced tea with no ice because
Someone took it all and never filled the tray,
Sparingly seasoned with two Splendas,
Carefully handed out and locked away by the keyholders,
Never sweet enough,
Never ever sweet enough,
The real sugar of real life replaced by
Bitter ******* brandied with the saccharine syrup of so-called safety.

Rather than wait, they told me
As soon as I returned:
You were unexpected.

Of course, I thought it was a joke!
Family dinners don't usually

Start with
Unusual silence.
Not a word until our parents
Stressfully and tentatively announce your presence.
Having learned of menopause
I thought it was a joke
Not understanding that you,
Eleonore, were already on your way into my life.

making the best
of the battery,
typing fast
hurredly.

not worrying if it rhymes.

we thought it
was the searching
that drained our resources.

yet it was the cheap and shoddy
pink thing that caused
the uproar, stressfully.

no need to hide then,
we have become as public,
all things considered.

demolishing the nissen hut,
where thistles grow.

sbm.

Her pen strayed on the paper.
Not a word to be penned
Her thoughts were blank
as with the paper would blend.

She sat and sat.
She wondered and wondered.
Her heart was trying
but her mind was plundered.

She would attempt for hours
but nothing would come.
Not even a slice,
not even a crumb.

She would eat, think,
and stressfully walk.
She couldn't find a cure
for her writer's block.