A Conversation with My Sister, About What to Write Next...

Talk about how you starved yourself

and threw mother's lunchboxes away,

talk about how one compliment

would be all the food you'd need

for one two four three days

how once you got home

you ran to your room and fasted,

and slept hunger away.

a dying body.

Talk about how the men on magazines

made you feel horny and inadequate,

talk about the closet, the 40th lock,

the chains of heritage concealing

you in fear. no freedom.

talk about grandad's illness,

the guilt you feel in retrospection

waking up in the morning and changing the channels on his tv

without asking, in silence, entitlement.

how you might have inherited his heel.

Talk about dad's weight,

how his health traumatised you

and how you internalised mom

her ruthlessness

slapping the spoon right off his mouth everytime,

how that's you now, why dont you talk about that.

and stop with these half arsed love poems that in the dead of night, when shit hits the fan with every card on the table, are just

One

Fat

Cry

for self love.

27/10/2017

Oxford, UK