My Eating Disorder Saves Me in the Apocalypse by Elisa Rowe

c/w: eating disorder

My street is as haunting

as a seaport. Vast, blanched, shivering.

This city can indulge and leave nothing.

Listen, my body

is a survival kit.

These thighs radiate like planets,

cloth and sweat clinging in orbit.

This brain so versed in rationing

hates everything I consume,

a black bean in the cupboard,

a cucumber chilled on a windowsill.

My ghosts are vague. I forget

their names. They come at mealtimes,

portioning grains of rice, dropping

whispers like rain.

I am learning what I cannot need.

---

Elisa Rowe (Crawley) (she/her) is a neurodivergent immigrant, writer, educator, and poet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Michigan Quarterly Review, SAND Journal, the International Women's Writing Guild's anthology Heels into the Soil: Stories and Poems Resisting the Silence and elsewhere. You can find her posting cat pictures on Twitter @elisacwrites or check out her website at elisarowe.com