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BEFORE THE ACCIDENT, AND AFTER

I promise to lose weight was a lie

I told in every register I knew, until

the night the wind blew backward,

and exactly seven yellow poppies grew

from the mouth of her corpse I tried

to cuddle. I then began to count

the number of times my insomniac

friend said the word tomorrow,

the number of years any cactus

outlasted my sister, pound after pound

of the weight I lost then gained—

                    my gravy-thick horror.

My piles of chicken-bone sorrow.

I tried to stop missing my little sister

so I could better love my pretty mother,

shadows engraved in the secrets

of her wedding bangles. But no one wanted

to kiss me, and it doesn’t matter. Fat

is a silver vessel that holds holy water.

I was fat before the accident, and fat after.