Against the floor my body feels cool. 
The flesh along my abdomen stinging
like salt on open wounds.   
The walls of my stomach are 
simmering over a gas burner,

their content boiling over. 

It is some time after 1AM. 
I’m sitting-up, sweaty and panting; 
the skin along my back pressed 
against the vanilla colored fiberglass

bathtub. Fingers sketching 
black lined patterns on the tile floor. 

My mother’s bedroom is next door. I 
wonder if the walls are thinner than rice cakes.

She may already know
what I have been doing in here. Tonight

the scale in the corner has a shadow
that crouches over me. 

My body lies weakly slumped over the 
toilet bowl. Fingers migrate
to the back of my esophagus; 
saliva forming a barrier between my twisted

desire and what my body
is not ready to be put through  
I don’t care enough to listen. 
Crossed together index and middle

fingers will pass the walls of my throat;

I learn that regurgitated words burn. 

Face drowning in the center of the 
toilet seat; nostrils absorbing the scent of 
vomited insecurities.

I am laying muscles and flesh.

The tiles feel thinner, connecting like paper chains— 

Eyes that sharpies have colored red and swollen.

A cough that my throat has coated with blood

and mucus. Clothes chanting in unison

 that they were not made to hold the rows of fat around me.

Today I don’t need food; my body will learn how to fold its way inward.

Stomach boiling over;

 

It is after 3AM. 
My bed is warm and my muscles are restrained.

I debate telling someone what I have been doing to myself.

With the lining of my esophagus tired and burned,

I won’t. I will continue, fingers closing lips like sealed envelopes.

I am sure someone knew before this.

Tonight I will sit, flesh stuck

to the wall beside my dream catcher.