Flesh is heretic. <br />My body is a witch. <br />I am burning it. <br /> <br />Yes I am torching <br />her curves and paps and wiles. <br />They scorch in my self denials. <br /> <br />How she meshed my head <br />in the half-truths <br />of her fevers <br /> <br />till I renounced <br />milk and honey <br />and the taste of lunch. <br /> <br />I vomited <br />her hungers. <br />Now the bitch is burning. <br /> <br />I am starved and curveless. <br />I am skin and bone. <br />She has learned her lesson. <br /> <br />Thin as a rib <br />I turn in sleep. <br />My dreams probe <br /> <br />a claustrophobia <br />a sensuous enclosure. <br />How warm it was and wide <br /> <br />once by a warm drum, <br />once by the song of his breath <br />and in his sleeping side. <br /> <br />Only a little more, <br />only a few more days <br />sinless, foodless. <br /> <br />I will slip <br />back into him again <br />as if I had never been away. <br /> <br />Caged so <br />I will grow <br />angular and holy <br /> <br />past pain <br />keeping his heart <br />such company <br /> <br />as will make me forget <br />in a small space <br />the fall <br /> <br />into forked dark, <br />into python needs <br />heaving to hips and breasts <br />and lips and heat <br />and sweat and fat and greed. <br /> <br /> <br />Eavan Boland<br /><br />Eavan Aisling Boland<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/anorexic-2/