In this poem a woman is sick and society encourages her illness rather than supporting and nourishing her. Thus, society is, in a strange way, sicker than she is.
An animalistic moan raptured from her tunnel of bony ribs,
As she wound round the pink binds,
“It’s not torture,” she reasoned in sharp, petite breaths. “It’s
culture.”
And so, she bound her waist like women used to bind their
feet.
“To be straight, to be thin, to be white, and to be clean is
perfect”.
It’s just a figment of western culture’s imagination that
perfection does not exist.
Her bones arch in mathematical angles that must satisfy pi.
Those western whales of anger would crush her pretty space
out of jealousy that they could not have one to call their own.
“They are not as valuable as me”, she reasoned in private. “They
are jealous, ugly beings who disgust me”.
She wanted to vomit the vile experience of meeting such insidious
creatures out of her system. But instead, she muttered spectacular words to the
world; because princesses don’t speak of the putrid.
She picked up a bag of chips and licked them with passive
aggressive glee.
To prove that there is no problem here; to prove that she is
naturally perfect; to cover up years of starvation and pain; to say “fuck you”
to the bullies who claim that perfection doesn’t exist.
Her allies of vapid admirers crow to her disordered
thinkings in confirmation.
“You’re so pretty; you’re so perfect; don’t listen to the
naysayers; thin is in.”
They flocked around like frenzied vultures, fanning the
dying women’s dreams.
Hungry to be good and perfect too.
For what would a vulture care about a little extra skin and
bones to devour?
