"She Ate One Tomato Every Morning"
Poem by Demona Lee, Artwork by Oliver Murdick
She ate
one tomato every morning––one gloved hand curved
around the bend of the fruit, the other gripping the edge of her desk––
where she already stood waiting for the rest of us to stand up bored
for the pledge of allegiance. It was about the self discipline to her––
eat the tomato like it’s an apple. Then the onion. Then the radish.
Feed the body only because it has to be fed. Feed the body to
keep it at bay. Give it its dish in the morning. Keep it chained
in the yard through the night. A howling, snapping dog.
Still,
she had what it took to be a good, self-contained girl. The flat,
dull hair. The clean hands. The short, unpolished nails, & teeth
sharp enough to cut up her tongue. Once, in her childhood bedroom
she showed me the maggot-shaped impressions on her knees,
the purpled crescent moons under the life lines of her palms,
the rice she spread into a neat line on her floor every night
to kneel on before bed.
&
it was there in her childhood bedroom, I told her I don’t trust
people who need the restraint of religious self-discipline.
I don’t trust the people who need to always hold themselves back.
So
the next morning, before first period, she ran duct tape
along my back in the tiled bathroom stall, smoothing the tape over
each one of my vertebrae with the flat of her small hands as I stood over
the porcelain toilet, my white collared shirt bunched in my mouth
because she wanted to show me how the pain could feel good & that––
if I let it––the pain would teach me to sit straight, the arch of my back now
painful & hidden & impossible underneath my school shirt.
It’s easy,
really. To pull the skirt over the knees. To cut the hair through the tears.
To pick the lice from your scalp. To sit with your back straight & hands
folded. It’s easy, really, to go to the bathroom & scrub at your wrists
until the water goes down pink. To change in the bathroom stalls instead
of the locker room. To walk the tightrope of convincing the other girls at school
that you don’t like boys too much to be called a whore but still like them
enough that you’re not a dyke.
It’s
easy, really. To cage yourself like a rabid dog. To swallow
the bland cafeteria meat. To throw your body against the
chain link fence of your ribs until it breaks from the weight of you
& you are now free to leave your teeth in the soft sides of the other girls.
Meaning,
everyday I watched her snap Madeline Cooley’s bra straps
against her shoulder in line for lunch. I watched her carve accusations
of sluthood into the bathroom stalls with the sharp ridges of her house key.
I watched her shout in the middle of Sex Ed that Abigail Bennett got chlamydia
from Sam Blackwood after she sucked his dick in the school parking lot.
After
school, I watched her pour bleach down an anthill. I watched her
throw a baseball straight between Kathleen Baker’s eyes. & once, while running laps
during PE, I watched her stop mid-stride to crush a grasshopper under her heel,
twisting her shoe back & forth so many times, guts & wings turned to silt
underneath her.
The winter
started showing our newfound chests through our school shirts.
I watched her howl with pain as her mother backhanded her
for not wearing the bras she left out on her bed & then again
for the lesbian porn downloaded on her school computer
& then again for leaving a bloody pad open in the trash
for her brothers & dad to see. Each time she was struck, I watched her take
two steps back. Fold her body neatly into halves. I watched her practice
her defeat. Carry resentful obedience. I watched her tighten her bra
so rigidly the straps left welts along her shoulder blades. I watched her
stuff her underwear with toilet paper so she wouldn’t have to ask her mother
for pads. I watched her peel the duct tape off her back, her arms bent
behind her like a dying beetle, her skin racing from her spine like the
dewlapped skin of a Mastiff. I watched her reapply fresh tape
like a bandage over her already angry back. I watched her split a bag
of rice through the belly like a butchered animal & kneel on it until I begged her to
stand up. Just stand up. Please
stand up.
Whoa. 🔥🔥🔥
Absolutely nuts. So many great images.