Some have you have seen this already, but I wanted to share this on here for those of you who haven’t…
anorexia
The Sick Girl
She walks in with her too-loose sweats
Flat ass
Casual tee
Eyes darting about
Until they reach their destination:
The cookie display
The snack-tray
She fingers a bag of BBQ chips
Pursing her lips
Hating and loving the salty sweet things
She gets to the front
She’s ordering
Yep
I can always spot The Sick Girl
I see her mind darting internally
As fast as those eyes
A million thoughts about
What to buy, what to buy!?
But one bag would never be quite the thing
To stop the Pastry Sirens from their incessant singing
And One Cookie is like blasphemy
I mean, really?
Really!?
Really. You must be joking.
As if there were such a thing as One anything
When it comes to her Insatiable Feeding
She can’t fill the hole in her Soul
With any material
Or flour-and-sugar-filled thing
But she’d get an A-plus for trying
And trying
She orders safely ‘til she can go crazy
“Non-fat latte, please.”
Yep. I can always spot The Sick Girl.
She’s at the supermarket now
Free to unleash the Craving Beast
With her unwashed hair in her face
Or Hat or hoodie
Attempting to be incognito as her bony fingers throw in
5 more boxes of Lucky Charms
Or Haagen Daz
Or chocolate-caramel bars
Her manicured nails distracting from
Her knuckle scars
On fingers that help her get every last bit
Out
They help her shout in that silent kind of shout
Because she doesn’t know what the hell to do
But try and numb the pain all out
I would try and meet her gaze and say
Everything will be okay
But the truth is I don’t know
And she thinks she’s hidden, anyway
There, on bright florescent light display
In aisle 3
She’s standing, then, in front of me
The clerk tries to make conversation
As she scans across things no one should eat
The Sick Girl can’t mutter back a single word
‘Cuz talking about the weather is just absurd
When her life is forever hanging in the balance
And you might Judge her but I do not
For we should never mistake Pain for Malice
I walk out, I say a prayer
One day she will be the one in line behind
The Sick Girl.
(Or better yet, there won’t be a Sick Girl to be in line behind.)
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Death March
I see you all out there –
Dying
With desperate claims of
“I want to be thin!
I will be thin!
Nothing matters but thin!”
And you live in this smallest of worlds
Like your smallest of bodies
Trying to die with at least some victory:
A cry: I was the thinnest!
A bag of bones in a grave.
Oh, yes, girl – you won.
Just look how you won.
Oh, I see you all out there –
Dying
With the extra flesh and fat hanging off your
Helpless body,
Stuffing more food into your face
Creating a barrier between your soul and the world
With your desperate claims of
“I deserve this food!”
Treat? Or punishment of the severest kind?
Your largest of bodies in the very same smallest of worlds.
Small little worlds seem so safe. Ha.
Watts said,
“There is no safety. Seeking it is painful.”
I see you all out there –
Dying
With your sweet, still-beating hearts.
The hearts you have always had, that have been hurt
And trampled on, and damaged…
Are Hearts begging you to face What Lives In Them.
Oh, the true power you would find there!
Have you not already lived the Worst?
Have you not already felt the Pain of the very Worst?
I see how you cling to your faulty thoughts as you walk lifelessly to your graves –
Believing that your only power…
Is in choosing…
How
You die.
But that is not your only choice.
I am one of you
And I chose
Life.
And I am calling to you as I watch your Death March.
“You don’t have to go! Oh child, you do not have to go.”
Join me
And we can walk a different road
Together.
