Digest
Emotion pressing into body like being pressed under a mattress.
Choke suffocate nothing to do but sag under dead weight
or writhe uselessly.
Collapse in blankets smother feelings under soft coversSink into a pillow and submerge all awareness, all desire.
You are at a buffet. There are five islands of food.
Wake up to the sensation of spiced needles surging from hands
Black heat flowing like black menstrual blood from feet
totally drained.
Body heavy as a bag of wet sand, clumped and disintegratingAs if it could stop the flood, as if it could block the flow.
Fried rice, bright yellow with green peas, orange carrots, the milky pink curls of shrimp. Lo mein, yellow gold shining with oil, pearl brown of sautéed onions with translucent bean sprouts and snap peas. Orange chicken, breaded and deep fried then covered with viscous bronze orange sauce, sesame seed sprinkled over. Flounder, tail and skin intact swimming in thin salt brown liquid garnished with spring onions, broken flesh steaming white.
Emotions. Emotions are inconsistent. Without order. Chaos.
Purge them. Expel. Vomit heave stick a finger down throat
and throw everything up.
Lean head against the toilet lie limp on the sheets with puddles of bilePools of undigested emotion leeching out like chunks of vomit.
Tofu, cubed and melting together in a gelatinous vat of blubbering brown ooze. Vegetables, broccoli with baby corn and sliced watercress, limp snow peas and corrugated carrots doused in pale pearly sauce the consistency of snot. Egg drop soup, neon yellow with tatters of white floating like slurpy spirits.
DrB says I never learned a healthy way to process emotions.
Says it’s not about trying to control them or suppress them
but metabolizing.
We use food analogies. Digestion. Another uncontrollable mechanism.Sometimes I starve myself. Then hunger rages and I binge.
Slivers of chicken, red brown and skewered on a stick, edges crisp and meat chewy. Dumplings, broiled but shining with grease lying on beds of impotent lettuce, container of soy sauce thin like alcohol standing at the side. Beef and broccoli, wedges of scaly brown cooked muscle tossed with stocky florets, all coated with mucus leaking into the pores. Alaskan snow crab legs, shells the color of rotten strawberries, jagged tips of claws protruding at every angle.
Growing up, we went to every. single. buffet in town. Every.
At least nine Chinese. Minimum. I grew up on hot and sour soup
among other things.
It was cheap. Father didn’t like mother’s cooking. There was variety.He ate plate after plate after plate, and demanded we do the same.
Where are you going? I’m not even done with the first island.
I was what, ten years old? Demanded we do the same to get our “money’s worth.”
I hate Chinese food. It makes me want to hurl
and hurl, and hurl, and hurl.
Until nothing’s left but acid raw in my throat.Sometimes, I hate eating. It feels like punishment.
There’s still the island of American food. Plastic oil french fries next to the pepperoni pizza with cheese sliding off the sides. Baked potatoes covered with mozzarella and cheddar sprinkled with bacon bits and topped with sour cream. Fat white scallops wrapped with bacon impaled in the sides with toothpicks. Corn sitting in melted butter. Popcorn shrimp, fried chicken, portobello mushrooms stuffed with artificial crab meat, oyster Rockefeller, balls of dough fried in grease and sprinkled with sugar.
He would get angry at us for not eating. Said we were wasting money.
If we went to buffet for lunch, he’d get angry again at dinnertime,
that we were hungry.
When I learned about anorexia and bulimia, I analyzed my choices.Not eating was not an option. So purge, and purge, and purge.
If it’s seafood night, then there’s a large crowd. Everyone races to get the clams in grey shells split in half, orange mollusks in black shells, Alaskan King crabs, blue crabs marinated in ginger sauce, fried fish with the eyes intact, lobster cut into segments cooked with red and green pepper, cocktail shrimp, slime grey oysters raw inside rock shells.
I know more Chinese dishes than I know names of emotions.
Rage stabbing needles gnawing face expressionless eyes malevolent shining
but silence.
Clog choke choke force to swallow feeling food sink clot into a ball of disgustLike lard then melt to fatty liquid slick taint coating organs and dripping arteries.
Think you can stomach dessert? Overripe watermelon, flavorless pale orange cantaloupe, hard underripe honeydew, vanilla pudding with a thin film growing, frozen vanilla yogurt with mottled sprinkles, peaches slick with corn syrup, creamy rice mixed with clear tapioca balls, doughy rice covered in coconut shreds with a peanut paste pit, oily rice balls rolled in sesame seeds, sponge cake dry like bricks, bricks of green jello jiggling. And of course, fortune cookies.
Undigested, undigestable. Binge and purge, binge and purge.
Never a meal on my own terms, never allowed to desire
simple rice with kimchi.
Money’s worth, worthless. Emotion like bloody blubber down the drain through the pipeEating all energy, consuming with such totality.
Have some tea as a palette cleanser. And oranges are usually good.
The only thing to do-sleep. Complete exhaustion.
Sinking into mattress and being sunk, suffocating
and writing helplessly.
I hate emotions. Given the choice between eating and starvingI choose to starve. Because now, at least I have a choice.
Choke suffocate nothing to do but sag under dead weight
or writhe uselessly.
Collapse in blankets smother feelings under soft coversSink into a pillow and submerge all awareness, all desire.
You are at a buffet. There are five islands of food.
Wake up to the sensation of spiced needles surging from hands
Black heat flowing like black menstrual blood from feet
totally drained.
Body heavy as a bag of wet sand, clumped and disintegratingAs if it could stop the flood, as if it could block the flow.
Fried rice, bright yellow with green peas, orange carrots, the milky pink curls of shrimp. Lo mein, yellow gold shining with oil, pearl brown of sautéed onions with translucent bean sprouts and snap peas. Orange chicken, breaded and deep fried then covered with viscous bronze orange sauce, sesame seed sprinkled over. Flounder, tail and skin intact swimming in thin salt brown liquid garnished with spring onions, broken flesh steaming white.
Emotions. Emotions are inconsistent. Without order. Chaos.
Purge them. Expel. Vomit heave stick a finger down throat
and throw everything up.
Lean head against the toilet lie limp on the sheets with puddles of bilePools of undigested emotion leeching out like chunks of vomit.
Tofu, cubed and melting together in a gelatinous vat of blubbering brown ooze. Vegetables, broccoli with baby corn and sliced watercress, limp snow peas and corrugated carrots doused in pale pearly sauce the consistency of snot. Egg drop soup, neon yellow with tatters of white floating like slurpy spirits.
DrB says I never learned a healthy way to process emotions.
Says it’s not about trying to control them or suppress them
but metabolizing.
We use food analogies. Digestion. Another uncontrollable mechanism.Sometimes I starve myself. Then hunger rages and I binge.
Slivers of chicken, red brown and skewered on a stick, edges crisp and meat chewy. Dumplings, broiled but shining with grease lying on beds of impotent lettuce, container of soy sauce thin like alcohol standing at the side. Beef and broccoli, wedges of scaly brown cooked muscle tossed with stocky florets, all coated with mucus leaking into the pores. Alaskan snow crab legs, shells the color of rotten strawberries, jagged tips of claws protruding at every angle.
Growing up, we went to every. single. buffet in town. Every.
At least nine Chinese. Minimum. I grew up on hot and sour soup
among other things.
It was cheap. Father didn’t like mother’s cooking. There was variety.He ate plate after plate after plate, and demanded we do the same.
Where are you going? I’m not even done with the first island.
I was what, ten years old? Demanded we do the same to get our “money’s worth.”
I hate Chinese food. It makes me want to hurl
and hurl, and hurl, and hurl.
Until nothing’s left but acid raw in my throat.Sometimes, I hate eating. It feels like punishment.
There’s still the island of American food. Plastic oil french fries next to the pepperoni pizza with cheese sliding off the sides. Baked potatoes covered with mozzarella and cheddar sprinkled with bacon bits and topped with sour cream. Fat white scallops wrapped with bacon impaled in the sides with toothpicks. Corn sitting in melted butter. Popcorn shrimp, fried chicken, portobello mushrooms stuffed with artificial crab meat, oyster Rockefeller, balls of dough fried in grease and sprinkled with sugar.
He would get angry at us for not eating. Said we were wasting money.
If we went to buffet for lunch, he’d get angry again at dinnertime,
that we were hungry.
When I learned about anorexia and bulimia, I analyzed my choices.Not eating was not an option. So purge, and purge, and purge.
If it’s seafood night, then there’s a large crowd. Everyone races to get the clams in grey shells split in half, orange mollusks in black shells, Alaskan King crabs, blue crabs marinated in ginger sauce, fried fish with the eyes intact, lobster cut into segments cooked with red and green pepper, cocktail shrimp, slime grey oysters raw inside rock shells.
I know more Chinese dishes than I know names of emotions.
Rage stabbing needles gnawing face expressionless eyes malevolent shining
but silence.
Clog choke choke force to swallow feeling food sink clot into a ball of disgustLike lard then melt to fatty liquid slick taint coating organs and dripping arteries.
Think you can stomach dessert? Overripe watermelon, flavorless pale orange cantaloupe, hard underripe honeydew, vanilla pudding with a thin film growing, frozen vanilla yogurt with mottled sprinkles, peaches slick with corn syrup, creamy rice mixed with clear tapioca balls, doughy rice covered in coconut shreds with a peanut paste pit, oily rice balls rolled in sesame seeds, sponge cake dry like bricks, bricks of green jello jiggling. And of course, fortune cookies.
Undigested, undigestable. Binge and purge, binge and purge.
Never a meal on my own terms, never allowed to desire
simple rice with kimchi.
Money’s worth, worthless. Emotion like bloody blubber down the drain through the pipeEating all energy, consuming with such totality.
Have some tea as a palette cleanser. And oranges are usually good.
The only thing to do-sleep. Complete exhaustion.
Sinking into mattress and being sunk, suffocating
and writing helplessly.
I hate emotions. Given the choice between eating and starvingI choose to starve. Because now, at least I have a choice.