Sickness: A Quartet

E Ingledew
Nov 5 · 3 min read

Emma Ingledew

I

In retelling,
you will be able to explain this all away.
You will make it funny,
because in a sad, kind of sadistic way it is.
It’s funny!
that you walked around a whole supermarket picking up ingredients
for a meal that you couldn’t bring yourself to cook.
It’s funny!
that you made it all the way to self-checkout tills
and stared at your reflection in their cameras,
then went back around the whole supermarket putting everything back.
You can make that funny? Can’t you?

Or maybe you will make it beautiful, .
Because in an over-saturated over-romanticised way it is.
Through retelling you can control the story,
make it tragic and perfect,
Focus on the warm glow of the streetlight shining through your window,
(and not the saliva filling your mouth)
Focus on the soft dripping of your tears like drops of moonlight,
That hit against the cold tile of the bathroom,
And talk of the light,
(not your constant retching, coughing that rings through the night air)
the streetlight outside that turns your tears into drops of gold.
Make it beautiful, to hide the fact that your mouth tastes of vomit
and bile.
Because right now there is no retelling.
There only is.

And right now it is not beautiful,
or funny, or tragic or however you will spin it later on.
There is only the truth.
A knowledge that burns your throat like
the sickness you induce

That you are completely
and utterly
Pathetic.


II

I am hungry.
I am ashamed to say it but I am so, so
Hungry.
I make lists in my head of my desires.
Soup, canned soup, with cheese cut and cubed and dipped
in the middle the kind that runs and goes stringy and
bread. Thick bread.
with butter heaped on top.
to scoop out the cubes of cheese the way my mother taught me too.

I chant these lists to myself like a lullaby or
an incantation that can magically cure me,
As if merely saying what I desire out loud can
rescue me from what I want.

I whisper it to myself the whole walk home and then return to my house and eat
Nothing
Just return to my bed and dream of bread.
and soup.
and cheese


III

They teach you in church that to want is a sin,
but I want so much it scares me.

I want to cry
all the time, and without embarrassment.

I want to fuck
who I want and without shame
without feeling used and slightly sick after
like a discarded tissue.

More than anything I want to eat
eat, until I’m full.

These days I’m hungry all the time.


IV

My mother gave me her eyes, her cheeks and her shame.
Passed down from generation to generation,
The way men pass down a watch.

I can trace it.
Shame is embedded in the bony arms of my matriarchal tree
a sickening, pervasive rot that stems from its roots.

Is this how it has to be?
Mother after daughter after mother who must all
Beg for a chance to be loved?

I have been weighed,
measured,
and found wanting.

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