This is what it is to have an eating disorder.

my reflection... hurts me.

i am
a lump of lard,
a spewing, volcanic thing,
erupting out of all bounds
of what it means to be normal.

please tell me this isn't me.

i want to claw at it, break the glass,
smear my blood on the image,
obscure it from view.

my punishment: a desert island,
a few bananas a day, crazy running.
fat and burned i'd be, but maybe soon
the metamorphosis, skinny, tan,
running wild and free,
hoping the malaria mosquito doesn't find me.

i cannot face my disgust,
my scars, the stretching purple
of fat-swelled skin,
pores red and leaking.
somewhere, a roof is caving in;
a baby is wailing
for a heartbeat it will never feel.


this is not really a poem.
free verse, shitty free verse at that,
trying to describe an existence
no description can truly capture.
i am lost in myself,
myriad folds of axons, transmitters,
partitions and chemicals
and a damned fucking mess.