This poem was written retrospectively about my battle with anorexia nervosa. Today I am fully recovered, but the memories are still there... Notice the strict structure and rhyming- they are symbolic of the rigid rules I imposed upon myself.

Air
January 24th, 2002

And I walk briskly through my life
The hallways of my mind
But I am lacking, so incomplete
In my imperfection, left behind

The scoffing from the mirror
The mocking from the scale
The models in the magazine
All inform me I have failed

I'm so pointless, superficial
School's fine, I always say
I'm cautious, far too informal
I've more dangerous games to play

I deny that there is hunger
I abandon myself, I refuse to feel
I weep inside my room, alone
Where their ideals become my meal

I try to drown it in my tears
I try to smother it in my dread
But the pain grows ever deeper
And I now suffocate instead

I withdraw, into my mind
Into that scanty, callous space
I walk like I was once living
But there is no consoling place

They say I need help now
But the infinite fear will not end
The scale, my worst enemy
The scale, my only friend

For why escape this nightmare
And why would I forgo
The only thing I understand
The only thing I can control

I wander through my mind
No thoughts of what I could have been
A mere phantom, erratic
Blown by the vacuous wind

Fury wells up inside me
Will I ever live, will I ever dare?
But feeling leaves me breathless
For my flesh is made of air

(c) Y.S.