TRIGGER WARNING: These poems contain graphic accounts of an individual living with bulimia. They may be triggering to those struggling with an eating disorder.

I am bulimic. A non-functioning person.
I see all the normal people who eat.
Who live in a world where food is their friend and not their enemy
and I wonder where I went wrong.

(a) Spring 2007
My hunger’s like a great, big, beast
It eats and eats and eats
And only when it’s 2x full
Will it bow its head in sleep

Each day I wake up to the light
A sunny brand new day
I stretch my limbs and wash myself
And thoughts of bulimia away

I talk each morning in first light
Of hope and faith, sweet peace
And then I dress, get ready for
The day my life’s released

They say you cannot wait for God
To help you fix yourself
But what if you have trouble starting
Will the sun not help the ice to melt?

(b)
Today I dream of dying
Largely because I don’t know what I have to live for
It is clear to me that to function
To draw people in you have
To have a spark.
Where did my spark go?
I wept so hard yesterday
My eyes bled puddles on the pillow
Please pull me from my hell
And extinguish my fire
There is an emergency in my soul
And I can’t escape

As I stare the rest of my life in the eye
The flutter of bulimia resides unabashedly in me

(c)
The bulimia eats up my insides
A hawk tearing at the innards of its prey
All I want is to be free
To live a life without disease
But something holds me back
The chaos adrenaline impulses fuel the disorder

(d)
The vein puncture in my brain is where I begin.
I live in a world many people walk through
but don’t know how it exists.
Or why it exists.
Attempt to understand the truth behind addictions puts them at a disadvantage.
Addiction. The poison that fumigates an addicts mind becomes malignant as their dependency increases.

(e)
Tragedy in this case led to hope
undeniable bouts of sand lightning
and creation of the unique twists of
wrist-cutters dreams in glass.

Yesterday recovery seemed obsolete
as I shoved junk into my mouth
bulimia brain of no thought
echoed in my actions.

Echoes earn their place in my tragedy
they scream about money, value, and a good life
eons away and mountains divided
from my life of disordered eating.

To speak truth is to face the lies and my truth is I’m not ready.

(f)
I cringe as I think of the gaping hole in my brain
The size of a tennis ball with chewed up fringes
The hollowness of the mind echoes in the mundane.

I collapse as the gullet of my life swallows my soul
With it the fibers of my olive green fake coat disappear
Expose follows, the fraternal twins of Gabriel smirk

I creep, voraciously, wait for the exhibition
The end-all intervention prowls, almost near.
Here, and all things semi-uplifting melt away, forms of redemption.

I procreate, but only in my dreams
Anesthetized in all parts of my body
Excepting the clitoris, it heaves with wanton desires of the flesh.

(g) Her Kind
A still teeter almost always to the right,
tilts sideways, she waves her float arms
ominously, she looks, pupils drift, terror.
Zoom, crash, hits the ground fresh with worms,
I watch her steer her head back up.
Filthy, disgust oozes from her art
I have been her kind.

Walk home, tri-light from the Kelly green
shadow by the maroon door, it welcomes;
capricious smells herald in, the girl leans
on the doorway, hardly sees her mum.
Filthy disgust oozes from her art
I watch her hide her wound, glass cut lies.
I have been her kind.

Asleep, worm head on pillow, she lies.
She dreams of a day when her teeth won’t fall out,
A 24-hour time when her mouth won’t monopolize.
Her lips pucker in, a no-tooth pout.
I watch her live the day, her head is not up,
Filthy disgust oozes from her art.
I have been her kind.

(h)
HateFUCKdisgust
shabbatBODYSEXhate guilt
isolationrelapse
RECOVERY

SEX:
Impulsivity lies in my deepest pores.
wanton thoughts and deeds thrust
out bony on impact into everything I touch
every day I lynch my dreams and haggard a rupture in the balloons that are my cheeks
woa to this oh so powerful disorder. Cancerous to my life.

(i)
The dreary road to recovery blinds me with arrows
swords, rocks, and daggers filter through
they are all I see.

Swift pillars made of judges
line my stage
but in the brilliance of my death/ eyes
they have no words.
cunt whispers through the concrete

Forgive the days behind you
Anticipate those ahead
Yet there is so much grief/ guilt in the wake
How do I move on without repentance
How do I survive
Without surrendering to the power of my sins
I am a terrible/ hateful person
I have no values
I wish to return or to leave
God please travel me back to the day
It began, take me away from the
Wretched world I have created.
I want a fresh start, no more lies
But everytime the wretched world
Bombs explosively in my face.
Recovery seems out of my grasp

(j) ON GOING INTO AN INPATIENT PROGRAM:

Psychiatric Unit
Psych Ward
Screening
Blood work
Hospital
Binge Eating
Mental Disorder
Rachel, Stephanie
Columbia
Research Study
Psych Ward, Psych Ward,
Psych Ward
Psychic
Psychiatrist
Psychologist
Medication
Prozac     Depression
Anorexic
Bulimic
Rent
Eating Disorders
Mental Disease
Tuesday Morning

(k) For the person right now inside me who doesn’t believe

I ask you what right
have you to doubt my
strength?
I am / was / will be an
all powerful woman with the
strength to succeed.
Craters can crash and quickly
assert their destruction but you will pay them no heed.
An earthquake divvies your
harmony but you find the
melody on the side on which you land.
For the God who art in heaven
I repent the sins I call my own
and humbly ask your forgiveness.
A kick to the underknee and I am on the ground.
The strength inside my soul will lift
it’s head in agony; defiance of the thing
that lusts to control my every move.
With strength comes failure
in no way a concession and ultimately
a conquest of body and mind.
Naked in truth, although this be hard,
You will never give up.

I feel terror drum somewhere
the war cry of doubt that exists.

(l) Religion
Religulous Jews Christians
Buddhists Janes Sikhs Muslims
Mormons Atheists Pagans
The list goes on
somewhere in the lineup is a
hexagon with glass
edges where I am supposed to fit
cookie cutter version of my
other siblings who one by one
with slight adjustments
have wiggled in.
to dictate someone’s beliefs
is a lesson in futility
tell her no and all she wants is
Yes
dictation is an assault rifle
to my brain, beliefs, feelings, and
so as it shoots I no longer
feel/ contaminated by expectations
and disappointment / brain and beliefs
disappear, not in the trash
the roachy plastic bag full of
insect holes and rotten vegetables
and not in the lilies and sunflowers in the
dining room.
in absentia the sun sets
the glass cuts my flesh as i
slide through the hexagon.

(m)
Quiet now; hush the tortured whispers
hunt in the daytime
trees with ornaments
and bellows and craft
trash garbage shit decay rot feces junk
the withered starbucks cup that is perked
to life, a homeless persons bank
euphoria sets in around the reservoir
and at six in the morning all you hear
are beating hearts and taxed breath
the limelight of what will be a beautiful day
brews on the skyline of the rich east; the floor that holds no furniture
Quiet now. Still the fervent allies of the birds
a hunt for the inner barrage of the soul
Commence the sunrise.