I dream of hospital rooms and wake up sweating, the covers stuck to my skin
like strips of glue. I was remembering the sadness scales on the wall,
those flimsy pieces of paper we were taught to point to
if we were a seven or an eight, or maybe a ten. One was splendid;
ten was I think I might want to kill myself right now.
In ninth grade the doctor held my wrists in his wrinkled hands,
quietly, the clock ticking in the corner, his cuticles white and dusty
like powdered streaks of cocaine.
And I’ve only ever had sex in January,
the winter light burning through the window, searing the moths
that fluttered on the sill, the two of us rolling around in bed
like lost kittens, until my mother stuck her head in the door
and asked what we wanted for dinner.
Mom, I told her. I’m not hungry.
And she looked at your mouth on my mouth, the curve of your hip
flung over my stomach, and said she’d come back later.
But you never did.
The neighbors hold barbecues in their backyard during snowstorms,
suited up in parkas and gloves, the newborn baby
making snow angels in the frost, her stay-at-home dad
flipping burgers on the grill that ice over as soon as they hit
the air. No one ever asks me if I’d like mine medium-rare
or done. I take my meat as red as it can be, full of sorrow
like a washer that cleans the clothes
that were meant for an unborn child. I was a miscarriage;
I never had any green thumbs. I was always the skinny one
who got berated for eating too much
but was then worried about when I didn’t eat enough.
And that doctor in ninth grade was the only one
who ever understood, the one who tapped my knees with the hammer
and bandaged up my wrists, looked me in the eyes and said,
You may feel small, but these scars are gonna eat you up whole
if you don’t do something soon.