String Doll

By Emily LaLiberte

Self-commandments become etched in breath on a bathroom mirror As a girl with yarn hair hugs a too thin waist, watching intently the way her spine, Bent in, spun with twine would poke through sallow skin. I guess this is what you get when you count your blessings and calories. String doll, I wrote this to show you the waking nightmares of Hat you can’t see happening to the temple that is your body, Not open for reconstruction. You can’t cover your tracks with these ‘half-truths’ spun into your arms Which tell a story of a cold scale which you use to weigh yourself like ham at a deli. Not when you shout it from the rooftops that you’re too that to be beautiful. And, get this, you always wear you progress like some sort of sick badge of self-mutilation, Another day which you mark on the calendar, One day, two days, three days, And you haven’t eyed that cupboard that you ate out of like a pig From a trough all those years ago. That’s your success story, you say, that you were able to overcome fatness And become an example for all those girls with thinspirations as high as skyscrapers. You break your mother’s weepy heart with the constant stream of questioning That leaves your yarn lips: ‘Mama, I know you’re tired from working all day, And you’ve heard this a thousand times before, But when will I be beautiful like you? When will I stop hating what I see in a reflection? When will I be myself?’ But, while you break the hearts of some and inspire others, you cannot deny That your life is a balancing act, a battlefield where the matter between life and death Is held up between a thigh gap And the way your mother prays, tear-struck For the day when you’ll stop bowing down to a porcelain bowl. No insurance for that. So, follow, Vanity Fair like the bible

And feel the acid in your lungs as salvation for the ugliness You feel in an unwounded heart. Because you know you’re coming undone, don’t you? You’re unravelling and fraying and I want to sew you back together, Yet I know only you have the needle and thread. String doll, please, take a moment to look inside yourself And see that your number on a scale is not a judgment call, Don’t feel the guilt of being alive. Strive for little victories. Let your thighs hug Because your body is trying to show that it loves you when they touch. Count the days of hair regrowth, The way unstaggered breathing feels hot in your hands. Your worth is not held up with each measurement and calories counted, You’re blinded by button eyes and a brain that wants to eat you alive, But I promise you, I’m your best ally, no strings attached. Yes, I know, I understand that this meal doesn’t seem at all appetizing And you’d rather feel the emptiness roar like a train leaving a station From your groaning stomach. But you are dying, and that’s not a question. So, next time, when you ask your mother about diet pills and trivial beauty, Bite your tongue like the breakfast she makes you When you rise with the sun in the morning. Because your story of success is not when hungry is your success story