lemon bag

When I was last there,
inside sad cave london room, with the rooks on the roofs
Why isn't rooves the plural, by the way?

When I was locked in that room I started drawing with a tiny paintbrush & india ink
pictures of the Olsen twins
and I'd find their photos
attached to the livejournals
of anorexic teens.
this is where I learned the term
 thinspiration
(an expression not found by the iPad)
and I looked at selfies of knobby spines
and clavicles sharp enough to cut cheese
and I read advice from pro-anas
to struggling anas-in-waiting
about how to get skinny
and someone wrote about drinking lemonade made with maple syrup
and I thought, damn that sounds good.


When I couldn't eat I knew I had to put something in me
my body was 21 years old
it was young
but it was a bag
there was nothing left in it
I was shriveling away
And I remember looking into the mirror once while I took a shower
because my housemate thought it sexy to watch oneself bathe
and I had grown so little
like a teen
like a teen with a blog
who could advise other teens
on how to let their skin tighten around their sad little bones
But I didn't like the girl I saw, that shivering little teen
because she wore her devastations like foodservice film
clinging to whatever was leftovers

So I drank that lemonade, like what else could I do? I drank it every day, all day. I drank it so much my urine was lemons, my shit was maple blood. Tapped, juiced. And my organs drifted out through the  holes left,
and I had all of the energy
of all of the suns,
and I was thinspiring the universe to bony tears