Morning after morning you mutter
Can I please stay home from school?
Mother’s intuition:
Check for a fever, ask if you’ve been vomiting,
Are you bleeding? Do you need to go to the doctor?

But you can’t explain to your mother that the warmth
isn’t radiating from your forehead,
but stinging your eye sockets from crying in the shower
The night before.

You’re trying to explain that you haven’t vomited,
But thoughts just as repulsive
Haunted you while you hid under the blanket
She bought you for Christmas last year.

You can’t tell your mother
that you once bled in the seventh grade.
As you sat on the bathroom floor,
Thinking of a way to cover the mistakes
You thought were going to live with you forever.

You look at her with dead eyes
No, No I’ll be fine. No doctor.
But your heart breaks your ribs
Trying to tell her yes.

You can’t seem to explain
Why you keep taking pills
Even though you aren’t sick.
But when she looks in your eyes,
Maybe she’ll realize
You’re sicker than she thought.