I don’t see it

You said, “Your body,” the week I stopped

drinking (or maybe it was extra squats,

maybe I had written well

and rethought my ten year plan

to suck you out of me

like misplaced phlegm),

and maybe the legs to stand on

shrank to wrist-thin.

You passed out and nearly brained

yourself next to the bongo

set, and when I asked what

you’d eaten you said

strawberries.

I thought you’d had mirrors cracked

and that my notes app

full of sub-bulleted ways to

save you

was for you alone.

We flew south

(one country wrong-over,

for money’s sake)

to save ourselves

and bought a year’s worth

of misdirection,

and white bread conversations

over half-fat frozen yogurt,

and $4,000

worth of strawberries,

just for me to insist

that dysmorphia was a

set of smokescreens,

a pointlessness, for family

members to feel better,

when the question was put to me.

I turned loose

something tied to an intestine,

like all of my best work,

and hoped it would be back

before dark.

By then it wasn’t mine,

and you said “Your body”—

so back I went to gnarl

my hideous little tracks,

and call this mine,

and you an anecdote.

The hardest part of putting

you away

was picking the notebook.

Let loose the possibility

you’ve closed and cornered

and let beauty pull you

apart to digest on

the lawn.

I hate at, out, and through

toxins of my choosing

and diagnoses not

(Mom waited until we were

grown to talk about

puking herself daily

in high school

and booking an abortion

in Oklahoma

until I spoke up,

gut-out,

and told her that was enough).

Let that be that,

your strawberries be yours,

and my little awfuls

end up on a page —

and so, worth it.

I gnarl myself

because maybe this round

it will stick —

bone from shin,

finger from throat —

and I will save myself again,

two decades on,

two time zones out

from Oklahoma,

and anew, anew in the mirror

I hang from.

Know me thinner,

know me less,

know me at this angle

once my lines line up,

and the lighting’s just so,

and my cock’s the way I like it,

and, God-sent,

I return to sender

this fruit, not mine.