Katherine Menjivar

A DEMO TO BULIMIA

You already decided to end with fat, shoulder-to-shoulder with the ogre underneath the mirror nail filing & chewing split ends. The time your mother distributed it to your friends—you laughed it off: some clever joke catered to mouths full of bitter cocoa cake and celery sticks. Later, you buried yourself in cotton sheets hoping they’d soak the excess or everything until noon hit the sun-kissed window-sill kissing the curtains—spotlight where you kneel before the abyss face-down, ducolax in its first hour and your abdomen does not sink in and your thighs are still like Siamese twins. You raise our fingers into your mouth slow so your tonsils do not fight the counter clock -wise tickling of the uvula, with fingertips and fragile nails. Your cranial nerves shell-shock my interior so all that is audible: the spine of yesterday’s lettuce leaves, a pea. I can only palm your shoulders for so long and give collutory from Listerine-cup thumbs with advice until you flush away in resolution or rinse for the rebattle, despite bile, despite the invasive voices chanting your name, she’s there. You stop to hum “Here Comes the Sun” over the running faucet.

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Katherine Menjivar was born in El Salvador, but raised and currently resides in New York. She holds a BA from SUNY Geneseo.