Courtney LeBlanc

Mean It

Do you know how many hours I’ve wasted hating
my body? How I torture myself each morning by stripping
down and stepping onto a scale – a fraction up or down
decides my day. Ask an anorexic her favorite food
and I guarantee there’ll be a list. Then ask her when
she last ate it and feel the silence settle like a weighted
blanket the comforts only her. I always assumed
I’d outgrow this – like how I used to squander time
watching boys I didn’t like play video games. But I still cling
to my old habits of restrict and binge, restrict and binge.
For years I lived without a scale but that was fifteen
pounds ago so it’s easy to understand why – my stomach
flat, my thighs toned. I still wasn’t happy though, I still
wanted less to obsess about, still thought I was ten pounds
too much. But how do I walk away from the habit
I formed at sixteen? How do I learn to sleep at night
without touching the peaked mountains of my hipbones,
the concave valley of my stomach between? How do I
leave the disease that has caressed me longer than any lover?
How do I love myself and mean it?

Lovers

I remember the square of his jaw,
the stubble that rashed a constellation
across my cheeks, my thighs. The baritone
of his voice and how the next morning he couldn't
get it up again. Still, he made me come
to the kitchen for coffee. I spread his
toothpaste on my finger, rinsed my mouth,
kissed him goodbye.

*

We didn't make it the three blocks
to her apartment, before she pushed
me against the cold brick of a building,
buried her tongue in my mouth, my hands
in her hair. The next morning she kissed
my bruised lips.

*

I drove him home the next morning, sat
in rush hour traffic, inching further from
my office and closer to his apartment.
We sipped coffee, travel mugs nestled
beside one another in the console.
He kissed my cheek, called me that night.
I found my way back to his apartment,
got little sleep. We never spoke again
but a week later I saw him at happy hour.
He stared from across the bar but refused
to say hello. I walked out holding
a woman's hand, our heels clicking
on the sidewalk in unison.

*

He was carved like David, free weights
the sculptor instead of Michelangelo's
hands. And every morning and every night
the words fell softly from his mouth, the way
a sculptor makes stone look like silk:
Beautiful, beautiful. And every day I fell.

*

The night was filled with cheap booze
and music so loud our ears rung after
we stumbled onto the sidewalk.
Her hand in mine we hailed a cab,
tumbled into the backseat. When
we pulled up to my house I didn’t
bother tipping the driver, he’d seen
enough on the drive home.

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full length collections Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart (Riot in Your Throat) and Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press). She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Read her publications on her blog: www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79.