The Body on Trial
I have become a witch
in the house of my own flesh.
My bathroom is an apothecary,
its shelves crowded with little promises.
Pills like teeth in amber bottles,
powders pale as ground bone,
and bitter tinctures swallowed
before the sun can witness my hunger.
Each morning, I kneel before the scale
like a sinner awaiting judgment.
The numbers rise and fall
with the indifference of executioners.
I have fed the cauldron everything.
My appetite.
My patience.
The softness of my stomach.
The girl in the photographs
whose waist I study like a sacred text.
I stir until my wrists ache,
until the steam wears my mother's voice,
until the bubbling blackness whispers
that beauty is only one more sacrifice away.
A little less bread.
A little more movement.
Another prescription.
Another promise.
The mirror hangs above the sink
like a window into a cursed kingdom.
Behind its silvered glass
lives a woman with my eyes
who measures every inch of me
against the ghost of who I was.
She calls it discipline.
I call it bargaining
with a god who keeps changing
the price of forgiveness.
And still, I return.
With my aching bones,
my tired blood,
my body swollen with histories
no stranger could ever see.
I have mistaken exhaustion for failure,
change for punishment,
and the stubborn work of staying alive
for something shameful.
Centuries after the pyres went cold,
I have learned to gather my own kindling.
No village waits outside my door.
No priest demands a confession.
No one has tied my wrists.
Yet every morning,
I drag myself before the mirror
and ask the woman inside it
what else she would have me burn.
Tonight, the cauldron is empty.
I stand over it
with trembling hands,
searching for one last ingredient.
And there, beneath the soot,
I find a small, unburned thing.
Not beauty.
Not forgiveness.
Only the terrible possibility
that there was never a curse
to lift.
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