She Eats

She's been making herself sick
Escaping to the solitude of bathroom stalls and
Hiding the evidence in bedroom trash cans
She regrets it every time but
She can't stop
See, eating disorders start at an early age
Watching what her mother ate and fed her brothers and sisters
Too young to differentiate bad from good
And now her immune system can't digest all those toxins
What comes up
Is all those words she spoke against her life
Against her boyfriend-turned-husband-turned-baby daddy-turned-ex-husband-turned-trifling ass bastard who left
When he'd had enough of her words
She eats the late-night conversations with her best friend
"That nigga ain't no good"
Just to throw them up again
Against her embryo-turned-fetus-turned-baby girl she tried desperately for nine months
To turn male who's seemingly turning male right before her eyes
She eats the coos whispered to her 8-week-old swollen belly
"I will call you William"
Just to throw them up again
Because her mother fed her three square meals of "You won't be nobody"
Two decades later she's still dry heaving on nouns and verbs
She couldn't completely swallow the first time
Cause she knew it didn't taste right
She's been making herself sick and she
Makes herself sick because
She can't stop what she's already put into her body
Into the universe
She eats what she sows and the rotten fruits from negative trees
Have condemned her soul to spiritual bulimia
An urban Sisyphus content to pull her finger out her throat
Just to push it back down again
She can't hold it in because
The regurgitated grammar settles in her arteries like ready-made heart attacks
To snatch away her existence
They never said eating crow causes death
So she makes herself sick
Escaping to the solitude of bathroom stalls and
Hiding the evidence in bedroom trash cans
She regrets it every time but
She can't stop

*the vid doesn't have the whole poem, just the first 3/4. . .sorry