I.) Outlining in my daughter’s
Black Crayola marker
Cruel sharp lines
Black against pink
Like a rip in a sunset
Pinching the rolling hills of my stomach
The swells of my hips
Ripping through them like
A dark highway in the sky

II.)               Thick bubbling folds of fat
Suffocating my bones
I could be beautiful underneath it all
The squeak of the treadmill
Is the only noise that
Accompanies me at midnight
As my daughter sleeps in
The room next to mine
I hope I won’t wake her

III.)            Kneeling on the bathroom tile
In front of the unforgiving porcelain bowl
I stare into its depths
A pool of stomach acid
My knees are cut and bleeding
My bones ache
I’m being hypnotized by the swirls in the bowl
My daughter wails outside
She’s hungry
She needs to be fed
I can’t let her become fat like me
I ignore her

IV.)            It’s her birthday today
How old is she?
I don’t remember
The only numbers I know
Are the ones on food packaging
My hair feels like dry grass
My veins are blue knots of yarn
Visible through my thin rice paper skin
My body is so cold
I didn’t buy her a birthday cake
I hear her crying herself to sleep
Her muffled sobs
Punctuated by the squeaks of the treadmill

V.)              Fight it, fight the waves of pain that
Wrack my battle-worn body
Hunger is a weakness
I can feel my heart gasping for air
Yet I still drag myself onto the floor
Do some push ups
Do some sit ups
Burn all of that fat
The moon glares at me through my bedroom window

VI.)            She drew a picture today
Of our family
The two of us, standing in front of our apartment
Unsmiling with holes for eyes
We don’t hold hands
She, with curly purple crayon hair
A yellow shirt
Red shoes
Me, wearing a triangular dress
Gray sticks for arms
Gray toothpicks for legs
We both wear deep
Black frowns
My head hurts
Please go away

VII.)         It is 3:17 in the morning
The red glow of my alarm clock
Bathes me in a light that
Won’t melt my bones
I can’t breathe
My ribcage is shrinking
I can hear every beat of my heart
The drumbeat pulses through my paper body
Like an earthquake
She is asleep in the room next door
I didn’t feed her dinner tonight
Can she hear my heart?

VIII.)       The heart monitor beeps
A steady rhythm
I lie underneath stiff white sheets
Like a corpse
I died a long time ago
White walls, white gowns
Is this heaven?
God comes in then
In the form of a blue-eyed doctor
He takes my pulse
Stabs me with needles
Where is she? I ask
He pauses and smiles pityingly
God’s eyes are oh so blue
That’s when I know
And I can’t even weep
I don’t remember her face
The heart monitor beeps on and on