skinny girls bleed flowers

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hello! this is a poem i wrote called 'skinny girls bleed flowers.'

i think this is by far the most personal and revealing spoken word poems. when i was 16 i was diagnosed with anorexia purging-type which is essentially a weird horrible anorexia/bulimia hybrid, but i've been struggling with disordered eating and body image issues for about five years. this poem is about the romanticization of eating disorders (often among young girls) and the pretty much horrifying reality of dealing with what is often seen as a 'cute, dainty' disorder on a day-to-day to basis, as well as the association of eating disorders (anorexia especially) with young, pretty white girls. a n y o n e can have an eating disorder, regardless of age or gender or race or anything else. they are not something to 'try out,' they are not diets, they're scary and destructive and can leave damage behind that often stays with people for the rest of their lives.

my links:

i wrote a novel

also a poetry book

words:

these are not monsters. there are no monsters here.

these feel like love, and when they creep inside you

it’s like something once missing is finally coming home.

how could a monster make such pretty girls?

pretty girls,

pretty skinny girls,

they look like everything

that is wonderful about being alive,

like vodka diet cokes

and pictures of hip bones at the beach

and all i’ve eaten for the past three days is my own fingernails

and these monsters (not monsters)

can make you pretty too.

you’ll learn to make jokes about why you’re slicing

the five strawberries you brought for lunch

(and breakfast, and dinner)

into twenty-five pieces.

lifting the morsels from perfectly

folded napkin with delicate crackling fingers

to hesitant tongue

and when the jokes get too cumbersome,

and taste too much like nourishment,

like letting go, like happiness,

learn to put an end to lunch,

forget what it means and

by the end of your last year of high school

you’ll know every spot in the building

where no one will ask where your friends are

and why you look so tired.

the monsters (not monsters)

will share their secrets.

you’ll learn that needle-thin bones, when crushed

into a fine paste and stirred into

the twenty glasses of water you were going to drink today

taste like lemonade

and you can have a sip

for only the cost of the rest of your life spent worshiping

the feeling of hollow

searching up number and number

and dead girl and number

you, too, can spend the rest

of the day smelling of what

you just had to scrub off the

bathroom floor.

go, they’ll say,

outstretching manicured hands, bottle cap wrists—

memorize menus and all the lies you could tell

spend hours at the grocery store counting

fifty

one hundred

two hundred

no more than three

or else suddenly your thighs begin to inflate like the balloons

from all the birthday parties you couldn’t go to

you will learn to avoid celebration

because celebration means food

you will spend christmas day

fanaticizing about burying

your dissolving teeth into your knuckles

until your heart stops.

the not-monsters

will feed you your first cigarette

and your second, and your tenth.

they will leave your once shiny hair

in a clump

on your pillowcase, just for you.

and when your body gets too weak,

it starts to crumble,

but where sick breaks skin

sunflowers will grow.

an entire garden will force

itself from your empty stomach

billowing out your mouth and you’ll choke

but you’ll be happy

because at least you’re not eating

you’ll decompose

until you cannot be differentiated

from all the skeletons that have been

living in your closet

don’t you wish you could shrink

don’t you wish you could have that control

don’t you wish you could make your mom cry

because she just doesn’t get why you’d do this

you don’t get why you’d do this

you’re smart but you just googled

how many calories are in tooth paste

the pretty girls

pretty skinny girls

pretty skinny girls

pretty dying girls

pretty dead girls

the parasite can be restrained but not destroyed.

but no matter.

it’s a beautiful thing to be made of porcelain.

the picture of your hip bones at the beach was worth it.

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