Shufei Ewe

TW & CW: mentions of and references to eating disorder behaviours

people tell me i look good now that i’ve lost weight & i think about the way

i burn my tongue one too many times on

the fuel of jet black coffee, no sugar, no milk, no

weightage to work off // i scald the roof of my mouth

swallowing green tea bags whole in hopes that the

green, lean-making mix torches right through my

trachea // i scorch every sting of hunger with a dress

size smaller when i go out, and cauterise every pang

with a pinch to my ribs // i brand almost, but not yet on

the parts of me that dissipate into disorder // i watch the

brand new me gain audience-appraised approval // i singe

my body’s desires to play the part of the desired // i char

badly-angled photographs & watch them go up in flames,

with a cup of jet black coffee, inhale the fumes like incense

to incinerate my body’s unwant again and again and again.

TW & CW: mention of, and allusion to, natural disasters

and by that i mean –– thighs like a thunder,

making their mark in stretches,

rolling across a convex of curve and skin and

extras people are eager to shed;

i mean –– arms in the shape only excess could

take, raised to both toast and ripple,

to the beat of turmoil, a howling that hums

through cerebrum’s crux;

i say –– wrist bone clanging on watch

straps, while shoulder meets cleaver,

ankle bones that stub into corners and hips that

tear a tornado into seams;

what i mean is –– not enough and too much, all

at once, for people to take in,

wrung in the wrong places and unbridled in

others, inordinate but insufficient;

to which i wager –– where furore & cloudburst

converge, this small lull in tumult is

the charm that lies in the eye of the calamity, right

in the heart of the tempest;

by that i mean –– i’m on my way to destroy the

gated keeps of what “pretty” means,

wreck the walled-up propaganda of responsibility

when it comes to being “beautiful”.