one
it can only be assumed
that a diet of sleeping pills and coffee
will not only fail to upkeep the strength I once instilled
but it will also confuse the hell out of my body.
two
I’m too poor to buy food
three
I’m too rich to get free food
four
I’m too f***ing proud to ask for charity anyway
five
when he touches me he steals from the deposits
in my hipbones and underneath my fingernails
what used to sustain me
he hides under his tongue
and I won’t ask him to stop
because lately I've been locking fingers with his rib cage
Eating takes too much time out of my very important schedule
of hating myself
seven
when he kisses me he leaves her residue in my mouth
and she snakes her way down my throat
like a tape worm.
eight
I am hungry for things that leave me starving,
like the potential of a world with a 1 to 1 ratio,
where mailmen get their letters on time
and drunks get hit hard
in the face
by an empty bottle full of promises
I am hungry for the atmospheric hum of nostalgia,
for the gravity in the tidal waves
and in the way she makes him inch closer,
farther away from me.
I am hungry for the sweet warmth of despair
threaded in my voice when I tell him
that I am afraid to hope
I am hungry for hope,
but I am hope intolerant
my organs can’t take that kind of abuse
a digestion left best for the stomach acid in comet tails
I am hungry for my father’s voice and for my own forgiving him
and for a god that doesn’t need to forgive
and doesn’t manifest himself in empty chairs at weddings
and picket signs at funerals
I am looking under car seats and trash cans and overturned sidewalks for forgiveness
because they don’t sell that s*** at walmart
and I don’t have a rocket ship to reach the stars.
nine
I am throwing my dinner into the cold hands of a toilet bowl
ten
no one even knows
eleven
I’m not even sure I know how to chew anymore
because after convincing myself that my jaw is only good as a landing strip,
my teeth as vanity plates, canvases of the mistakes I swallow,
my tongue as an enzyme to his orgasm,
we are all works in progress
and I am better when no one can hear me fumble
twelve
when he touches me,
he is only reminding me
that I don’t deserve
to be nourished.