half

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.