Gasping attack on the quarter mile, right round aching appendix burst, crawling, forward along the floor. Give me a chant so I can beat my way on. Full moon. Get up. No. Somebody has to come check on you on the track and make sure you’re still breathing, because the last time this happened who knows what and we wouldn’t want to get in trouble. Lots of ugly men in shirts that don’t fit. Yes, I’m alright. No, I don’t want any of yours. Leave me alone. So they run off to chase some weighty crypt thing and leave me bleeding up over the hill fading from view. Dark spot. I haven’t caught my breath much less anything to be ashamed of, so I sprawl out and look around for baby birds, start thinking about what we did and who’s left to blame, here to go and off the roofline This wasn’t about anything before, but suddenly when I’m left alone it becomes about everything and you’re all I can think about, and this whole miserable thing on my chest seems like the perfect mirror image for everything else that you’ve left. It’s too confusing. I don’t like it. Who asked? Just let the worms do the work.
Underweight. 112 pounds. I’m not sure if you’re still alive.
I’m stretching in front of the camera in a private show, glancing every once in a while at your scrolling requests for spitting and stripping and different colored y-fronts. I don’t like you and I don’t care that you’re watching or that you could buy me ephedrine and trading cards. I’m here so I can look at myself. When I get an erection it’s got nothing to do with you or yours. The spaces between my ribs looks like veiny canals in the yellow light and I can see you imagining your fingers digging into them by the tightness of your fist and that slow leak at the corner of your jaw. I say out loud that I’d like it if you pulled me by my limp wrists up off the floor before letting me fall back down into a sprawling jagged knot on the carpet. I take the pictures hoping I’ll be mistaken for a dead body or a victim of something.
Asshole spitting carried out in careful sequence. I heard you like it better that way because you’re a flop. You’re the kind who sticks their hand through the whole because you’re anxious and hate mystery. You know what you’re here for. Nothing else. You took a bunch of pills and threw up in the bathtub. I hear your mother found you because your father didn’t care to look. Two weeks in the hospital too busy with nothing to do. Isn’t that sad? Last I remember I told you about some Yoko Ono scene and I never saw you again.
I’m underweight after 117 pounds. More than that can’t stand to be yourself and eating becomes a check you can’t cash. No debts public or private without a carefully-measured deficit. Lose and gain control. Easy.
(2017)