I’ve inhaled onion rings like smoke rings just to spit them out
like bitter words of regret for as long as I can remember.
My heart has been so damaged by acid reflux
from all the meals I’ve thrown up that I’m surprised the doctors
haven’t offered to give it a skin graft yet.
Stop turning my ribs into metaphors about ladders
or toothpicks or stairways to heaven. My ribs are a basement
to hell. They will lead you nowhere. I count them like
the number of times you don’t count yours.
I have spent so long swallowing my pride like firecrackers
but they never seem to light me up.
Even my shadow wishes it didn’t have to trail behind me
because there is hardly anyone left to follow.
I am not beautiful or model-like.
I am the skeleton in your closet, the one that your sons
dress up as for Halloween, except my bones are real bones
and not made of plaster or glue and white putty.
Do not compliment me on all the weight I’ve lost,
because no matter how many pounds I shred like confetti,
I still feel like I’m stuck in the carcass of a whale.
I am a palmful of lit matches and I am seconds away
from collapse, from falling into a puddle of gasoline
and destroying myself.
Do not call my skinniness beautiful.
When you have starved yourself down to a molded
version of your former self, whittled yourself down
like a wooden flute, then maybe you can call me and I’ll listen
to what you have to say.
My body is a disaster zone.
My struggle is not your victory.
So don’t treat it as such.