sticky-sweet on my lips; my tongue flashes

out quickquickquick

as if it were a snake’s,

quickquickquick.

skin sloughed back. mottled, blemished,

reddened with the dry heat of shame,

i am suddenly aware of my

nakedness.

the peel catches in my throat. i choke at the round pinkness of my breasts,

sweet fruit in my palm.

juices trail down my fingers and i

blasphemously trace

those glistening lines with my searching

tongue.

eve, the apple, and i, kindred spirits,

soft pinkwhite flesh speckled

with the rotten sin of lust.

burn and scorch and Creep up my esophagus.

five more minutes until i eat you say and five more minutes you say again and again

and one more piece of Reduced Calorie gum

and then the pain slips into your throat and then into your mouth and burns ragged holes into your pink fleshy tongue

cough it up and spit ugly-frothy-clear-Pain

one more piece of gum and that’s one-quarter of the pack into your mouth. a girl told me gum makes your jaw fat and ignorance is bliss.

poke at your fat legs and fat stomach and fat everything and swallow down your fucking stomach acid that keeps spilling from your throat and onto the floor in front of you pooling on the tile soaking through your shirt dripping down the sides of your mouth

ugly pink ugly Reduced Calorie saliva

you’re pretty sometimes but really only when your vision is fuzzy around the edges and your fingers are tingling and you think you might actually be dying this time. but take a look in the mirror, you vain girl, and smile to see those ugly jutting ribs. you killed yourself twice over to get here and you’ll fucking do it again.

you’re in control, aren’t you? you’ve willingly brought yourself to this point and not considered the damage you’ve done. live in the fucking moment why don’t you?

vomit until you’re empty again because so help me god if you have gained weight tomorrow you will never eat again. sip some water and gag it right back up. wonder if Someone has poisoned your water with those dangerous Calories.

and don’t even think about how irrational that statement is,

because i’m NOT fucking stupid i just have bulimia. obsess and obsess and obsess.

irresponsible. an idiot to think you’d survive this. puke and puke and puke until your throat is bleeding and your eyes water and you can’t really hear over the static in your ears.

and eventually, just curl up on that nice cool tile floor in a puddle of your own bloody saliva. pink has always been your color, hasn’t it?

sleep there because you can’t be damned to haul yourself to bed,

wake up the next morning and wipe your eyes and maybe drink a little tea and pretend that you are Okay. if you pretend maybe it’ll come true.

you taste acid in the back of your mouth and retch. naive to think it would ever end.

yesterday i imagined her and i,

together again.

i say her name sometimes because it feels pretty on my tongue.

remembering the

soft blue twinkle of the ferris wheel lights, or

the curve of her smile when she noticed i was watching her.

everything was pleasant, then. we were still young, caught up in shyness and fear, two girls huddled together in the maroon glow of dusk. afraid

to say what we felt.

sometimes i long for what i have mostly forgotten. is it wrong?

he says he cares for me but i do not think he does,

not like she did,

or i for her.

i repeat her name to myself and know i can never return to that august night.

oh,

to be an eighteen-year-old girl collapsed on the tile of the communal showers at precisely three-forty-eight am,

i say,

as if she is not me.

as if i do not see myself in the speckles of yellow vomit adorning her lips,

or the tiny

ever-so-faint

half-moon indents in the soft, innocent flesh of her knuckles.

i do not look at her and see my own

swollen features, jutting ribs. shallow breaths,

pulse too fast and then!

she coughs, a violent sound, and lifts her head to look at me, bleary.

oh, she says. hi.

hi, i echo, and then:

are you okay?

oh, of course, she says, as if i haven’t stumbled across this unholy act, a literal catharsis. why are you here?

perhaps i can trust her. we are trespassers of sorts, defiling this neutral space for our sacrilege. in the morning it will be clean again.

maybe we will, too.

yet as of now, we are empty, frail bodies, driven by a consuming

Need. the antithesis of

gluttonous girls.

fuck it, i decide. the sweet taste of truth bubbles in my throat as i search for words.

i speak to her directly. consider it my confession,

o holy mother,

blessed art thou among women.

it is thus that i say:

i was there,

not where you sit, but hunched over the dove-white sink. two days ago, barely.

wincing as bile poured from between my teeth. lifting my head to look at myself in the mirror,

perhaps only because i am Vain,

or possibly: if i don’t force myself to stare into those unfamiliar reddened eyes

at those hollow cheeks, blistered lips, sallow skin,

i will never again recognize myself.

it is atonement, some subconscious perversion of the sacrament.

maybe i say this all in my mind,

but she Understands.

we are twins in a way.

and i see her in the hallways, sometimes, and we smile, remembering that

moment,

three am, a time when we were Empty together-

or simply when we were not alone,

and i can recognize the beauty in that.

oh, it’s what everyone does,

she says lazily. shoves her index finger daintily into her mouth and

coughs once,

twice,

she turns away and you gaze at her ribcage,

apathetic, maybe,

listening to her gasp.

she turns back around and for a second, looking at

the blush on her cheeks, a splatter of pink-golden-sunrise-love tinting her skin,

the softness of her watery eyes

the sticky-sweet-shine of vomit adorning her lips,

for a second, maybe

she is more beautiful than anything.

i knew a girl

worshiped her, in truth

and let myself be consumed in her divinity.

i killed myself

one august night,

the air was sticky on my bare skin.

i saved myself that night too

flesh and blood and religious ecstasy.

i can’t understand it

i don’t try.

there’s a girl i know.

she’s exhausted and i fucking tried

it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault

i knew myself

at one point

and i never knew her.

(afraid to grow up) i hate how everything’s changed

i’m in love with a girl

and yet i’m kissing boys who don’t love me at all

i like to pretend she’s still mine

occasionally

maybe she thinks of me

yet she doesn't exist anywhere but in my own head.

and i don’t say anything to the boy

who kisses me as if he can’t breathe

gasping-as my hands meet his.

i’d love him

if i could forget her

it’s ruining me

fragility of life

[the empty feeling at two am] nothing goes away anymore

i’m stuck with identical curving lines down my wrists

and the thought that “something’s changed” -because i don’t understand myself anymore

and all i know how to do is stare at the ceiling

i love myself and i love the whole fucking world! (is what i must repeat)

what have i become? and what have you become?

suicidal dreamers (!) and yet i still cannot forget.

and yet i’m staring at the ceiling