Overjoy

for my ex, anorexia

by Audrey Elledge

I run into you in the grocery store.

There in the cereal aisle, between rows of glossy boxes, you poke your empty cart against my thighs. Our old stomping grounds, you say. Remembrance strikes like a match. With those red thin lips, you say you’re seeing someone else now. Figures. You tell me not to give you that look. I tell you not to look at my waist like that, like you’re making a plan.

I know you still think of me. You smile and I nod because I do, but not in the way you believe. 

You think I miss the way I needed you, the way we embraced on the scale always tipping toward that greedy zero. You think I miss glacial skin and hollow insides and violet knuckles and peach-fuzzed arms, and attention from more men than you. You wonder if I still believe hunger is virtue and refusal is romance. I remember when we lied to my friends, when we showed up late to avoid sitting in kitchens, when your shadow hovered close even when you were in the other room. Then, we always went home to my bed, lying together and exposed under covers, my heart protruding from my ribs, my collarbone a bicycle handlebar you could reach out and steer.

You think I miss the way you whispered smaller smaller smaller and lesser lesser lesser and watching as your chanting shaved me down, whittled me to the bone, fastened me to you.

Look, I actually don’t think of you much, because now, I want more. I want surplus, I want excess, I want overjoy. I want a glut of teeming life, more bones I can’t see. I want it boiling over, foam pouring down sides of pots, cream rising to the top, liquid running down my chin and wrists. I want abandon. I want to grow heavy and soft with what matters. I want to hear the earth say it has missed the gravity of my body and listen as eternity reclaims me. I want more and more and less of you and more and more of me. 

But instead of explaining all this, there in that aisle where we once danced, I choose to step out into the light.