my lips are slicked with black

cola, the zero calorie kind,

trying to starve away the hunger

that roars in the cavernous

hollow of my stomach

her noxious breath, a stagnant cloud

of bleach fumes and bile,

carries words into my aching ears

promising to make me pretty

(promising that I will disappear)

she slides her skeletal limbs

into my warm puppet-skin

and makes my feet glide

over the bathroom scale

one-two-three-sixteen

times a lonely day

my eyes are dead fish

floating in the sea of depression

that laps at the brims of my eye sockets

and my blood drips through my collapsed veins

like rain into a gutter, mixing and mingling with

all the shit and slime and disease and grime

that congeals in the great concrete throat of the sewers

it's a slow, sort of wonderful death

euphoric, I am never ever alone

because sweet Ana is always with me

humming to the clinking

of my bare and beautiful bones

10.25.08