Before my mother became pregnant with me
She was a bulimic,
Carried a metal spoon in her purse
To gag herself with,
Locked herself in a car in the middle of the summer
To get my fathers attention,
Could drink all the boys under the table,
Was the top of her class
At the police academy,
Carried a gun and was too quick to fire it,
Could see every single one of her ribs,
Was a self destruct button she could not stop pushing

It took everything she had in her
To let her stomach swell,
To watch her bones be swallowed by flesh,
To think of me as child instead of parasite
Leaching away everything she’d ever worked for,
To keep the food down,
To learn how to share her body,
To treat herself like a human being,
To look at herself in the mirror
And see the miracle she had always been,
To learn how to defuse the time bomb of her body
Long enough to get me to safety

And I have repaid her
By shoving her efforts back in her face,
By trying to return the gift of my life
She spent so long picking out for me,
By inserting fingers into throat
Head into toilet
Pride into bucket
Sanity into hospital waiting room;
When I passed at out school
The nurse called my mother
And told her that my heart was beating far too fast
That my blood pressure was dangerously low
That my hands were so cold

When we got home I looked at her and said
Mom, I just wanted to be pretty,
And she told me that the women in our family
Have a history of trying to disappear,
Of slowly receding,
Of holding matches to our skin
In an attempt to melt away all the extra,
Of confusing ourselves for phoenixes,
Of burning ourselves at the stake
So no one else can beat us to it,
Of trying to beat our hearts right out of our chests
Because that’s a few more pounds that we don’t need,
Of thinking self destruction is the only way
Anyone will ever think we’re beautiful

She told me that she is so sorry,
Told me that I am not pretty,
That there is far too much of me
To ever fit inside of six letters,
She told me that that is a good thing;
I am trying to believe her,
I am trying to learn how to look at myself in the mirror
With the lights on,
I am trying to stay away from matches,
I am trying to stop pushing self destruct,
I am trying to get myself to safety
Before its too late.