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Instead of any kind of solution, we destroy our own bodies in misdirected anger

At the systems who brought us to this current breaking down

(at the march, I watch waves of cross-hatched wrists crash past me

and I wonder who we are trying to destroy

Wake up! my darlings, my three legged dogs, my beautiful bipolar comrades

No more little destructions!

Let’s take the battle from the roiling in our chests to the streets

Stop burning the inner skin on your thigh

Start burning down prisons

I am asking for your full wakefulness, no more energy drinks as self care, please

Look me in the eye, tell me you’re sober and hopeful, whole and beautiful

and believe it

(or look at it this way

think of what you could be doing with the hours you spent organizing your thinspo tags

of dead Soviet gymnasts)

If you’re going to weep because of the creeping darkness that is shaped

like your father’s hands

Do it on the steps of the Capitol building

Where they will have to look at you every time they cut funding for child protective services

My tabby cats hit by cars, my seventh grade crush who killed herself,

my friends who swallow their pills like communion,

my lost migratory birds on frozen prairies,

my survivors who doubt even that,

All my tender and broken things who I hold to my erratic and unpredictable heart-

It’s a slow war out there

Believe me when I tell you it’s alright

Or, if you can’t manage that right this moment- take my hand

We can work to make this all right

Alright?

Bradycardia

My heart is beating itself to death

I know this, and yet

when I am jolted awake in the grey hours of the morning

by my heart stopping for one beat, two

I feel my own limbs,

squeeze my hips for certainty

The pillows of fat are a promise against willful self-destruction

When my lover rests her head on my chest

she counts the slow, juddering beats

(one

two

three

four five six

seven)

I want to cry at the waste of it all

How was I to know that while I was hollowing out my collarbone like a chalice,

the consequences that awaited me?

I understood the impending disaster as abstractly as modern art,

walking through the gallery of my own demise

and admiring the portraits of half moons on my knuckles like a Rothko

There was a statue of Karen Carpenter in the lobby, but I didn’t pay attention

I broke my own heart over eighteen months

The doctor who’s examining table hurt my bones to sit on

told me that I took ten years off my life

Here, We Call It A Bent Twig

In class

I watch your beautiful shoulders and the way your tattoo ripples across them

like a Palestinian flag in the wind

(you’ve told me what the Arabic translates to many times, but I always forget)

It’s in your grandmother’s handwriting, you tell me

When she wrote out the snippet of Wordsworth

you somehow forgot to mention it’s eventual destination

She was cruel,

you tell me

A woman who loved her beautiful children at the expense of the plain ones

(your father still talks himself down in the shower sometimes)

You shrug

She wasn’t all bad

She was beautiful herself, which counts for something

(your family doesn’t talk about the little sugeries, knife blades as upkeep)

She had a tough life

She didn’t like Jews for a good reason

I think there’s something to be said for being young and female and clever and married

There is some rage there

written on the skin of her descendants

You wear your ink link a military badge of honor

for continuing, for surviving

I hope she knows about the strength inherent in the wingspan of your arms

and your independent streak as long as the races you run

Those choices, above all else,

mark you

Sometimes When Two People Love Each Other, it’s Really Unfortunate

The office lights don’t work right and

it’s cramped so

I am sitting too close to you as you

tell me that last night she

slammed your hand in your car door and

broke three fingers on your right hand and

you are asking me how to get

temporary disability accommodations

as you can’t write your women’s studies paper.

What I Would Have Told You a Year Ago

This is not political

I am not on a diet

I am not hungry

If I was hungry, it wouldn’t matter

Three apples is more than enough for the day

This is not political

This isn’t what you think it is

This is a new way of eating. I am smarter than those sick girls

I am not as thin as you think I am

I am not sad

I am not scared

This is not about anything but the island of fat under my navel

This is not political

This is not political

This is not political

This is not political.