This is sunday morning, steeped in sunlight,

the world blurry outside of a cracked window.

This is the aftermath,

late night conversations still glowing on the phone screen,

single spaced musings about the fragility of life,

and a hundred other childish things.

This is tracing patterns overhead on the popcorn ceiling,

and letting the sound of your own breath

lull you back to sleep,

wondering if you have ever felt quite this human before.

There is a boy who steals sleep from the gods and sells it for a dollar fifty,

filthy fragments of damaged dreams that taste of rainwater and immortality,

and later, when you wake, you will feel clean again,

but cold,

and you know that to be mortal is to be warm in the wrong ways,

all hot tears and ugly laughter and something that feels uncomfortably close to love,

but we are not gods,

and life is too short to spend asleep.

There are 206 bones in the human body and thirty minutes until the bell rings,

stop the chit chat because this is fifth grade health class and today we are talking about growing up,

make sure you eat right and smile more and don't do drugs...

or is it smile right, do drugs more, and don't eat?

Moving on, it doesn't matter, get your calculators out because today we are learing how to calculate body mass index,

can you say body mass index, kids?

Welcome to the number game,

to memorizing the calories in a chocolate milk carton and how long you have to jump rope to burn them off,

we walk home thinking small thoughts and practicing how to take up less space,

teacher says things get easier when you're older but I believed mama when she called me beautiful right up until the day I walked in on her watching the way her bare stomach buckled in the bathroom mirror, right up until I saw the tears in her eyes,

and this is not to say I blame her for the days when I do not feel beautiful but rather to acknowledge that we failed her too.

there are 206 bones in the human body but baby you are so much more than a skeleton, and I know they taught you that hating this body was the same as helping it,

and it is so fucking hard to be gentle with yourself because big kids don't cry,

so count this as me throwing a tantrum.

This body has danced to so many songs alone in my bedroom, and I love her.

This body has pet so many dogs, and I love her.

This body has bled and bloated and broken... and I love her.

and some days I do not want to, but mama taught me that love is unconditional.

There are 206 bones in the human body and I don't know if learning to love this body gets any easier, but maybe it is enough to try.

they taught us in school that everything is made of something smaller, that if you cut it in half enough times you’ll still be left with something,

and I think the girls on the magazine covers in the grocery store checkout line must cry about this at night,

cry that you cannot cut enough calories to be nothing at all,

but they are trying anyway,

corpse turned commodity because we read somewhere that love is only given to the dying, so thank god we are dying,

feasting on famine, packing pride down bleeding throats like it’s enough to sustain us, wondering if this is what gluttony feels like,

stomach bile gnawing on self worth until I wonder if my teachers were wrong this whole time-

I don’t think I can feel any smaller than this.

Three weeks ago I froze

half the chicken from the club pack, and

two months ago our daughters

planted basil on our porch, and

two years ago the vines

formed grapes that dangled in the sun, and

decades ago today you

were born.

You will come home from work on this

rainy, jet-lagged Wednesday, and I

will have cooked that Thai dish and

poured glasses of Gewurztraminer.

You will sit at our table, and I will

give thanks for many things.

I remember the room

in the back of your house

with the old box TV

on a thin metal shelf

and reclining chairs

that sat against the walls.

I remember the music-

Papa always loved to play the piano.

The room in the back had no door,

so his music always let itself in

and floated around the room,

making itself, and us feel, right at home.

(his favorite song still dances through my head sometimes)

I remember when the music stopped.

I wasn’t old enough to understand why,

but you started watching TV with us.

I remember the movies.

You only ever had two:

Hairspray and Black Beauty.

(I still can’t watch either without thinking of you)

I remember when the movies stopped too.

I remember the quiet.

When the white walls

became the loudest thing in the house,

and the silence

told me everything

the grown-ups wouldn’t say.

I remember when they cleared the room:

The day your hospital bed replaced the recliners.

Your nurses had to stay around the clock

and all our family from out of town

started to visit.

I remember the day the quiet broke:

Dad picked us up early.

I didn’t let anyone see me cry.

I remember the day they cleared the bed too.

and our room

was just a room.

I remember saying goodbye.

Today was finally the day. The venue was beautiful, the flowers perfectly arranged, and she had everybody she loved in one place. She had the most beautiful dress on. All eyes were on her.

What a perfect day? She thought as she laid a flower on her dead fiancé’s chest.