my body is not my body is 

my body seven times removed 

and hungry, I’ve shed 

and absorbed my skeleton 3.7 times 

trying to find the perfect shape 

for myself and they’ve all been wrong—

beauty is Little House on the Prairie 

boasting Father could wrap his hands 

all the way around Mother’s waist and I 

have been preconditioned to starve myself. 

When I’m like this I eat my fingernails 

and the cartilage around them just a little more, 

pretending that since I know I am not food 

this is not eating. My fingers are slim enough 

already I wish I could worry away 

at the soft skin of my belly and the too wide-ness 

of my hips and thighs in the same way, but 

that would be eating and eating is a sin 

I am forced to indulge in; guilty damned 

to gluttonous hell if I do or if I don’t, all I think about 

is what could have been for dinner if only I hadn’t 

known myself too well to fill the fridge. 

I’ve been this way for a while, is this telling? 

Is this confession? It seems a sin to confess this, 

my multi-sin, the sin of eating and the sin 

of not eating and the double sin of both eating and 

not eating and the triple sin of both eating and not 

eating and then having the gall to tell you, 

like I’m seeking intervention or pity or, god forbid, 

attention, the greatest sin of all, but really 

I’m just stating a fact I’m wearing 

on my skin with the excess 

hair you only grow when you’re a starveling 

and the dark bags under my eyes and the way I know  

it’s a sin, but if I can just wait an hour 

or two longer I won’t be hungry anymore. My edges 

will scare the hunger-beast away, he’s a coward 

and knows my edges are already sharp enough 

to cut him, cut me, cut the mattress. In my sleep 

I accidentally consume three geese 

of feathers and dream I am growing 

wings, dream I can fly, dream I am pregnant 

with a host of goslings and that’s why 

I’m so hungry all the damn time—

I’m eating for seven at least.