Bulimia

It started as a fight.
I threw the first punch
hair pull, fingers laced in roots,
I wanted to lose.


He broke me open like a squash,
squandered from late summer’s harvest
and half gone to rot. He carved out
my insides with a pewter spoon,
cool against my neck. I slept

in an oven, stomach filled with heat
and I could not keep at bay the glory-stricken
bubbles rippling in my meat. My body arched
like an old boat groaning, and my bloated
gut pulsing with a heartbeat more more more.


Truth is, I like the pain- the addiction
yanking my insides out with domestic
this-makes-me-a-woman violence. Vomit
stained, hungrily I swallow it all again, addicted to
wanting but not to having, a swallow before
the burp, addicted to clock watching, time tracking
eight hours of work, forty minute run, this will never

last, forty five seconds microwave, two minutes late time
and time again, thirty minutes to spit it out, addicted
to addiction, to the Blood Line Repeats, addicted to his
cooking, I let him take my beet. It feels full

in his palm, says this is how you peel, his thumb
blade grazing round and round, off the skin
curls twirl in pink pieces, a deft final twist,
slice off the nippled head, pushing
the round nudge, naked beet in palm,
navigated with ease, as if he had already
been there, here, before me,


I want it all, addicted to the nightmares, drinking
them by the bottle, I swallow the four hour, five day
work week, one hundred and fifty calories less, addicted
to the fight, throw myself against him, beats in a basket
he says,

Mince the onion, and, addicted to his command,
my hand to knife, push and lift and push
until I am all little pieces sauteing in
the skillet, I just want to be boiled, simmered,
mouth, wet, waters he says you’re
so sensitive because I am addicted
to the drain, the sucking in the round
“O” sound, the swallow and the spit.