poem I revised

Boston, Massachusetts, March 29, 1883

I.
My fingertips are sick with
The chill of your skin.
The maple outside our window
Taps the pane
Until I don’t hear it
Anymore,

Like the clock in our
Dining room that rings
On every hour, until
We stopped listening.
My cheek finds your
Shoulder

Cold and I wish
Your lips would press
Against my forehead,
Forgetting how un-kissable
You’ve become in the past
Hour.

II.
The wind echoes its song
To measure the emptiness
Of walls so bare they feel
Shame.

The sun sprawled in places
I didn’t dare to touch,
Illuminating particles in the air
Making them look like snow.

It reminded me of that December,
Walking through Delaware Park
With you and the snow under
The streetlamp before it melted on my skin.

Pacing on the concrete
Of your sepulcher floor,
My voice crawled out
Into the air as the draft chilled

Only my skin.
I wanted to be where you lie now.
The only thing left
Inside you, Consumption.

make a scene

Ages 12-19, I was anorexic. Mom and Dad tried in their own ways to help but nothing did. I did yoga, it made me feel healthy because nothing else did. I came home one night in December and ate a bowl of salad. I was proud of myself. I decided to eat a meal when I got home from yoga, instead of my usual go upstairs and write and read until I was so exhausted I could pass out. Most of the time I would not eat breakfast, chew on sugary gum at school, I had heard this story about a girl who couldn’t open her mouth anymore because she hadn’t chewed in so long, I made sure that wouldn’t be me, then I would go home and up to my room, close and lock the door and stay there, the rest of the night. My family eats dinner together every night, I didn’t go downstairs during dinner. I spent two years not sitting with my family while they ate dinner. It was revolting to me, the smells, the chomping, the saliva. Mastication disgusted me. The night I ate a salad, I was on my way to my room and grabbed an apple, even more proud of myself. Mom decided to say “Is that all you’re going to eat?” ALL!? Fucking all I’m going to eat, mom? Here I was, so fucking proud of myself for eating at all I was beaming and she dared to say that. It got to me, I threw the apple down harder than I’ve ever thrown anything before, it shattered and pulped all over the floor, juice running into cracks and I pulled on my sneakers and ran out the front door. I ran, and ran, and ran, the cold air piercing my lungs. The sky was smoky and pink and grey and it tasted smoky too. I ran to the wooden playground at my elementary school. There’s a huge wooden horse there with tires on the inside that you can sit on, that’s pretty much all you can do on it though, so the horse was for losers, no one played on it. I climbed up inside that horse and sat there, waiting for something to happen, God to smite me, my heart to stop, rain, something. My dad found me. He must have ran out the door right behind me, it took him minutes to find me. We didn’t talk, he grabbed my hand and helped me down and we walked back in silence. A year later I wrote a poem kind of about that story, it was more about how I felt so outside of everyone, my mom loved the poem. That was a punch in the gut. Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing without anorexia. Sometimes I still get that punch of needing something more, some more torture, needing ana. I don’t really want to fight that feeling anymore.