when I see you like this I want to
force feed you pink ice cream until you vomit.
without your knee high boots and sparkly shirt that proclaims you
'bitch queen',
I hardly recognize you, this
pale child in a white paper gown, infested with
sterile tubes that drip life into your
brittle bird bones.
you open your mouth a little
in a silent coma gasp,
but the monitors that watch over you like
plastic angels beep steadily
and the stab of fear dissipates
into a dull ache, because inside the
soft wet cavern of your mouth beneath your
hollow cheeks, I can almost see cobwebs,
just like in the cartoons when the
cat or mouse or wascally wabbit
hasn’t eaten
in a very long time.
if you die here,
and some amorphous, misty deity of the afterlife
weighs your heart upon the scales of justice
you will flinch and pray the needle barely stirs
because every time you tip a scale
you're choked by the kind of fear
that should be reserved for people
being chased by things with sharp teeth.
when I see you like this I want to
rip up these waiting room magazines with their
paper goddesses of white bone and hungry eyes,
who have found faithful worshippers in millions of little girls
who pay them homage sprawled over toilets and crying over scales and
silently driving themselves to destruction.
