Smash all the bowls... Renée Eshel

Smash all the bowls, I don’t need them anymore

Even at the time, I was understanding of the metaphor, ‘have your cake and eat it, but the problem is you get fat’, still it was absorbed, unadorned, permeating my mind. It is present when we stop speaking for the, duly noted, Last time, and by extension, I cut ties to food, too; as though you and him had an embryonic binding, tacitly coveted. Time slips up, and I find the pictures colluding together, reminders of when you forced me to eat brine, scales, and the back of my tongue. My wiry bones spit the table knives back in your face, bitter tasting, I still want to impress you even now. I try to swallow after chewing and chewing, I will come to associate the tough shame with the dining table and your conditional apathy. You stripped me of childlike relish, unsullied, as you photographed me adjacent to pears, and her straight up and down. I was plucked, featherless and unripe, cawing through the cracked carrier.

I then consummated only canned soup, a routine, until it tasted like felt and being out of breath and I never touched those bowls again. In fact I stopped feeling a lot of things. My fingers unsoiled by oil and salt and anything candy like. No minerals, nothing essential, no unity to the earth. I could not stomach original sin, practiced break ups as I was unable to bite the hand of Eve. After time, I caved and scooped dirt from under my nails, funnelling it into muscles. In a warped compliment, you say I look healthier, more womanly and I shudder. Suddenly, I no longer want to be a girl. This is inseparable from not wanting to be your girl and the indifference between the two still frightens me. If I take away my mouth and tongue and guilty hands and appetite maybe I will be completely devoid of ability to stir your commentary into batter, gorge on it, let it follow you around, impregnate your vision and prostitute rationality.