You do not mean to betray me.
Yet, you continue
counting the calories in your margarita.
Carefully, you pull back the transparent wrap
covering your plastic tray. Its contents:
all organic, all whole-grain. Clean.
Standing before the mirror’s smeared glass,
you smack your stomach into place,
pull in your ass, try to carve an image
who bears every last secret privately.
Try to be that girl who only blinks on cue.
I unconsciously betray my memories,
when I slip, slap you hard, hoping for a bruise.
I imply, without meaning to,
the way spectres of wasted bodies
half their normal weights, still haunt
the hallways of my brain,
holding closed their paper gowns.
Once, we tried transcending body.
Trading carbon for oxygen,
we’d be pure air, — a memory
which always weighs me down.
You should seriously try to get some of your poems published (or self-publish them–there are websites where you can do this now for a reasonable price); I think they would be very meaningful for a lot of people. I’m only a few words away from tears. Even though what I’ve been doing lately with my eating habits it purely health-motivated–for the most part I have come to like my body the way it is–some days I just get so sick of the fact that I have to work so hard just to make sure I don’t end up with diabetes or heart disease. Sometimes it feels like it undermines all the work I’ve done to be ok with who I am and how I look.
Sorry…I didn’t mean to go on and on, but I will say that, besides beautiful language, the mark of a good poem is the depth of feeling it brings up in the reader. You may not write the next “great American novel” but your poetry is a great achievement.
Thanks, love. I’ll try to get back on publishing soon. But these comments mean a ton. <3