Dear Ana,
I wonder if you know that yesterday all the neighbors left casseroles
on your back porch because they thought you’d already died,
and even the undertaker knows your first, middle, and last name by heart.
Ana, you poor broken little girl. You’d drop coins into your mouth one by one
and make wishes to be even skinnier, just ten pounds more, please God,
if only you weren’t so scared that a few extra calories would be hanging off
that copper skin. This is a hunger strike; you sit crosslegged
on the driveway holding up your precious sign begging for more passersby
to buy a little more of your flesh, My ass is too thick, my arms too flabby,
Thick, luscious flesh for only 50 cents!
Ana, remember how everyone used to pass notes in grade school,
paper scrawled with love letters and smiley faces, slipping
through sweaty fingers? Ana, can you pass notes in your collarbones now?
They don’t teach us about you in health class because you are weak,
and weakness is not something to be tolerated. They don’t teach us
about you because they are too afraid the pictures of your thighs
will be too graphic. Your wrists like toothpicks,
your ribs like a ladder where all this hunger is trying to crawl out,
rung by rung, and escape from you.
Ana, I’ve seen you get down on your knees
in the middle of Sunday service and pray for size zero jeans;
I’ve seen you refuse the Communion wafers and wine
out of fear they’d fatten you up too much. Ana, you
are pushing your luck. Your hair is falling out; so much of it
is already gone that you could wear a sweater made out of
your own blonde strands. Tell me, do you wear it well?
Will the boys swoon over you now?
Today your mother forces you to stand on the scale,
but the numbers mean nothing. Ana, 110! Ana, 105!
Ana, 100, 95. 94. 93. Ana, 86!
I’ve seen the moon eat more than you do; it swallows the sky
every night and always goes back for seconds.
Even a mouse hoards more cheese than you do.
Dear Ana, yesterday a boy tried to hold your hand on the way home
from school but it disintegrated into dust between his fingers.
The day before that he tried to kiss you on the mouth
but your lips were so dry it was like swallowing sandpaper.
Dear Ana, this is for all the times you tried to hold your own ghost
just to give it a little comfort, but it slipped away in your arms.
I am writing you a letter and in it I am standing on the ceiling
of the Eiffel Tower and screaming fuck you, fuck you
at the top of my lungs. Because fuck youAna, that’s why.
You’re just a poor, scared little girl and you are taking this baseball bat
and you are beating the shit out of yourself until there is nothing left
but blood and guts. But you never had the guts to start treating yourself
well; you only had the blood when the constant throwing up
gave you ulcers. Dear Ana, fuck you.
Dear Ana, I will not stand beside you and watch you wither away
into brittle autumn leaves. I will not watch you do this to yourself.
Your body is a burning building and I will not be the one to fetch
the fire hose. That is your job. Always has been.
Ana, aim the nozzle at the living room.
Hose that sucker down.