Plainly Anonymous

I’ve never been good at introductions. The day I binged, I called her from a truckstop, unable to speak. The dashboard and passenger dip dizzy with sprinkles, plastic, smeared receipts. “I can’t breathe,” I gasped. There are always tickets to places you never wanted to go. All that energy now mine. Caloric virus, I the host. Oh, small child, pregnant with shame. So many things we take for granted. Lungs. Bugs. Bats. Bellies. Beauty. Later, beads of floral vomit splashed my forehead as they hit the eggshell bowl. Marked.

You are mine. Fine.

You try so hard, but you can’t hold yourself down enough. One of us was bound to control the other. One of us was bound to admit this cycle is a kind of contained conclusion, at least a necessary self-definition, at most this body’s waterlogged home.