Body Image Therapy Center: Day 1
I don’t know how it’s possible for a room to look fat but this one does impossibly fat
& it smells like butter bleached tablecloth Kool-Aid I can’t afford to be here
No, really I’m going to die in debt & this won’t fix me On top of that this
bitch on the couch next to me really just said I used to purge once a day but now it’s been
weeks & everyone smiled & clapped & my eating disorder is absolutely reveling
in this shit “See girl they don’t get us No one ever will That’s why we’ve got each other”
& I have to agree I mean fuck I’ve thrown up five times today swallowed gallons
of moose tracks mint chip oreo gagged until I pissed the floor iced my eyes ran a mile
faster ran it again all before coming here tongue slimy gums raw to listen
to this girl tell us she’s fine________This shit isn’t gonna work “I don’t think I belong here”
I tell them They say everyone says that I say “maybe everyone’s right” Either You Run
The Day Or The Day Runs You! says the whiteboard On the way out no one walks next to me
We meet again a week later all of us in the same seats in the same room except that bitch
from the couch who I guess is fine now “So you let her go home” No, Joey,
Everyone, I have some news Sarah died last night
left a note exhausted fourth time in the program so
tired maybe in some future calm I don’t cry
but the others knew her “Be gentle with yourselves today” says the social worker
Be Yourself! Everyone Else Is Already Taken! says the whiteboard Right now
there are four boxes of cheesecake in the freezer 24 steps to the bathroom 5 cameras on
the ceiling 2 alarms The sun lights up brown crumbs on the couch Sarah
everyone’s crying I don’t know what to do I’m not like them I’m not like them
Body Image Therapy Center: Day 31
the therapist’s couch is big enough
for two people plus room for pillows between, but my father
and i—in an attempt to demonstrate closeness—each pick one
to hold on our laps, while another woman behind wire
-framed glasses asks me to speak from my perspective
about what’s happened to us. i don’t want to be here,
but the Center thinks a conversation with my father
might magically end years of bulimia. so here i am, listening to myself
tell him (again) he wasn’t there for me when i was raped.
but this time, a surprise: “I didn’t know you were raped.”
how is that possible? “You always said ‘assaulted.’”
what do you think that means? “I don’t know—groped
or something. Touched. Not raped.” he thumbs at loose paint
on the walls, loose seams in the couch. i become a mother suddenly needing
to protect this child from my violence. for a moment i, yes
even i, am fooled. it is only us in this room, now, has only been us
in the room, always. if i think it enough it will light me on fire.
so i pretend, but the reality is i will leave and go eat dinner
with the others, our eyes sunken in while assholes
force-feed us butter and talk about tv shows like we’re capable
of watching them without obsessing
over the actors’ flat stomachs. and papa, he’ll go back to that woman
who thinks i’m “a mess” and that i’d be less of one
if she’d raised me herself. because, “as we all know” my mother
is “very depressed.” and sure i fucking hate this woman, but beyond
her demise, the thing i want most in this world is my dad. so let me
hope like hell something sticks this time. just for a minute.
because i know when we leave, we will—in an attempt to demonstrate
closeness—stand at the same time and embrace. but while my father
will set his pillow on the couch and walk away, i will cling
onto mine long after he’s gone, squeeze it harder and harder until its cloth
is a shadow, my lap is a child, my hands are a memory begging for warmth.
Jo Blair Cipriano is a 2019 Brooklyn Poets Fellow whose work has been published or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Copper Nickel, Epiphany Magazine, Yes Poetry, and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for the Frontier Magazine 2021 Emerging Poet's Prize, and lives in Tucson, AZ with her partner and the street cat they accidentally adopted.