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You  barely register the implication or previous trauma. Outside, it’s bright and you are now wearing your glasses again so you can see how hot the sun is today. You barely noticed the close calls–that bus that almost hit you, the way the tv fell into your face and left only a black eye, the time you got taken by a wave when you were seven. You feel your rib cage. I’m emaciating, an old voice says. Nothing is as good as being right tastes.
The grip on your phone has loosened. It has to. You are succumbing to some arthritic curling. Your hand becomes the claw. Like a crone’s wand, the straw is in your pocket but for how long? How long before you whip it out, began to lose yourself in the thin plastic, the repetition. I’m  emaciating.

“Ten pounds isn’t alarming for someone trying to lose weight but your thyroid is enlarged,” she placed her hand on the left side of my throat lightly.

And I walked to the ER when I was 24 years old because my throat was closing slowly but rapidly. I walked. When I got there, they said
“Your lymph nodes are swollen. Your sinuses have dripped downwards and created an infection and we are going to give you an injection to make swallowing easier, and then antibiotics to take orally.”
Suddenly I could have killed them all with my eyes alone.

“I’m referring you to get an ultrasound.”
When the ambulance took me to the hospital, I made the mistake of telling them I was anxious.
“And I want to get blood work done.”
When the ambulance took me to the hospital, I made the mistake of telling them sometimes I think I make things happen.
“And possibly an endoscope and swallow test.”
When the ambulance took me to the hospital, I said, “My throat is fine.I want to see a psychiatrist.”
“Your left tonsil is swollen too but I don’t think that’s causing the difficulty. I want the thyroid checked out.”

Years ago, I ran my car headfirst into a parked cement mixer breaking my sternum and experiencing my first major brain injury as I slammed my forehead into the steering wheel on impact. The seatbelt cracked my ribs when it tightened. When the cops arrived, I refused the breathalyzer and made the mistake of telling them
“My life is over.”
So I was put in a cell alone on suicide watch. I refused to get blood work done and they told me
“We won’t take you to the hospital then.”
My friend used the word misconduct to describe it.
“It was like a threat.”
I laid my head on that metal toilet, vomiting and dizzy, bruising up my chest. No one looked at me again. What festers unhealed, balloons.

“dysphagia” or “the act of naming things”

“120 pounds.”
“What?”
“You weigh 120 pounds.”

He wrote it down on a piece of paper, something with my real name on it and walked around me to get back to the computer.

“Is this scale accurate?”
I was still standing there, reading the numbers, squinting.
“Just calibrated,” he stated without looking at me.
The numbers had a bit of a halo around them. It was the light, my astigmatism, my vanity about it that made it hard to read.
“I’ve lost ten pounds in three months.”

He looked over at me without saying anything but I could tell that got his attention.  It got my attention. It wasn’t that I spit an apple into the palm of my hand mid chewing while walking down the street. It wasn’t the way I felt my teeth lock in place with the fistful of gesticulated bread near tonsils. It wasn’t the water stuck and lockjaw. It wasn’t the time in the woods when I massaged my jaw back open after trying to eat a snack, sore from talking to myself, from chewing. Or the two 911 calls in a year, the ambulance bills, the psychiatric referral. The way I felt the Caltrate lodge itself or the cherry pit plant. The way it hurt my wrists to type bolus or cyanide or amygdalin or the one I clung to globus hystericus. My pact with God to lose ten pounds without trying.

“Inexplicably,” I waved my hands in front of the mirror. “I lose ten pounds.”
Magic and mirrors are double edged swords. I’ve been trying to lose ten pounds since I was born.

“How tall are you?”
“I’m five seven,” I take one foot off the scale to put on my glasses.
He looked at me again.
“You look taller.”

“dysphagia” or “the act of naming things”

I once saw the future.

the whole future across my eyes
it is better to ruin this thing.

She returned only moments later with something clenched in her hand but he couldn’t see what it was from his position.  Tensing, he tried to keep quiet. He had begun to worry while she was out. Not just about the game but about his ankles and wrists, her skill, her motive. Was he trapped here? Without sight? He heard water being poured into the glass on the table. He felt the bed sink and the heat of her hips. He felt condensation press his lips, the bottom of the glass, the weight of her ferocity, demuring.

“We were at number three.”
She wasn’t letting him drink, merely rubbing the glass over his lips to cool the skin off, to tease the nerves.
“Story number three is a story you’ll remember.”

She set the glass back down without offering a drop. He could hear it drop suddenly had a vision of a pale blue circle being cut into the wooden table, ruining it.  His mother always reminded him to use a coaster. No matter where h e was going, she would pull at his collar, tell him you look handsome and pat his back.

“Always say thank you. Always flush and wash your hands. Always ask for a coaster,” she waved at him from the front door.

He suddenly couldn’t shake the vision of his mother there, dark skinned, petite, short and Indian. Him trudging to the unfamiliar neighbors. Him trudging to the birthday parties and her , smiling in her betrayal having abandoned many things to be there.

“It was last year. At the anonymous party.”
She stayed by his side and rested her hands on his chest. He didn’t say anything but she felt him tense.
“There was a woman there wasn’t there?”
He didn’t say anything.
“What did she call herself?”
He swallowed some more spit.
‘“She wanted to stop the game but you wouldn’t let her.”
She felt a tiny shake in  his torso as if he was chilly. Sneering, she got real close to his face and pinched his side.
“What was her name?”
It’s not that he cried visibly, just the shake of a body guilty, handcuffed, mortal and succumbing to the tipping scales.
“Say my name,” she hissed at his eardrum.

“Story number 3=13”

“if you don’t know your passion,
it confuses your mind,
not your heart.”

Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer

We should match.

The streets were lit with glowing bulbs, a rainbow theme and crowded.
“Excuse me,” she had to shrivel so she wouldn’t touch everyone she passed.
Her cape hit a woman’s mini skirt. Her heel got stuck in a crack and she grabbed a large bear to keep balance. He didn’t mind it. He barely noticed. Those kind of casualties can be brushed off. It was impossible not to let a hand force a lower back to move or to stand tall and let your shoulders brush each bar patron. She quickly adjusted her headband to keep the antlers on.
“Excuse me,” she repeated as she barreled through them all.
“Excuse me.”
“Excuse me.”
Politeness was the indelible torch she carried. Things broke at the green and she shuffled her way across the intersection without tripping again. The clacking of her heels becoming louder as she moved away from them, she could hear horns and laughter behind her.
We should all match.
When she saw him, he seemed taller.

Boundaries are the invisible lines drawn around you that make the world go round.

choose your fighter.