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.