Writer Spotlight
TW: Discussion of disordered eating
That’s disappointing, you ordered a bunch of things I don’t eat
Pride, confidence, happiness
They ran out of my usual order of anxiety
I was born full on hopes and dreams and love, love for me
I threw the last of it up last week
Eating Disorder
Juslannie Rosso Brito
Just Might
Chris Murphy
Today: You are happy. Outdoors the weather stifles, neither too hot nor too cold. For human beings, Earth remains hospitable. Its hospitality wears you out, threadbare. To you, to the day, it entirety offends. You locate and pinpoint and file your complaint, and years later, years that grow on you, you relocate and pinch and extract your complaint. In the electric ultraviolet light, reading it silently, you remember: You are happy.
Meanwhile: Others think you are unhappy. Cruel. Shallow. Cosseted. Their fascination expires abruptly. You don’t see when. You are busy reading your daily complaint outdoors, out loud, bare naked, both hot and cold. They file it under “Attitude\Bad” but they are mistaken. You mean good and joy.
Later: You aren’t mistaken. Your certainty is the reinforced rebar in the middle of the eruptions and the crumbles. You point out the cracks, identify structural failure all around. They look and fail also. If only. They just might. But the air is also conditioned.
Tonight: You don’t sleep. Air is thin and humid between you. Screams aren’t heard. You dream that within the silence of space exists a truth and a misunderstanding, just barely touching. Your dream awakens you.
Tomorrow: You file another complaint, just another expression of joy, a fascination with what offends you.