By Juliette Lopez
tw: eating disorder
my pap-pap never let my mom
eat sweets as a child.
no matter how much she pleaded,
or how much she cried
for a Little Debbie
or a Hostess Suzy Q,
he stuffed her with
bran muffins
and ants on a log.
to him,
thin was beauty
and he wouldn’t be satisfied
until she disappeared entirely.
she won beauty pageants
with her bran raised body,
but Little Miss Pennsylvania
couldn’t claim her crowns
from a hospital bed.
she found herself
scavenging her kitchen at night
on a hunt for anything
that would soothe the wailing
cries of her stomach.
her bones screeched
as she fell to the floor
and reached between the gaps
of the freezer with her coin-sized
arms.
she stretched past the endless bags of vegetable medleys
and leftovers of grilled chicken with wild rice,
until her numb fingers met with the icy lid
of the tub of ice cream
that lived in the cave of her freezer
for the past two summers.
she ripped the tub away from a wall of ice,
scattering loose peas and ice cubes
across the floor.
her knees wobbled
as she struggled to hold the tub
up to the moonlight—
Turkey Hill Peanut Butter Ripple
her fingers danced across the frosted lid
quiet as to not wake anyone up—
a ghost in the night
she lifted the lid
and dug into the gold
with her hands.
cream ran from her fingertips
to her elbows
and she cried.
and she cried.
and she cried.
she thought that this is what love must’ve tasted like
she ate and ate until
all that was left
was a thick brown liquid.
she lifted the tub
and poured the cream down her throat,
leaving a permanent ring
around her lips.
sometimes I catch her licking at the ring,
never forgetting the story of a girl
who ate 45 scoops of ice cream.