Aspartame - Rios

I arrived here at 20, rail thin in a polka-dot
dress,
tooth enamel dissolved by stomach acid

I was banking on my high school sweetheart
to be a source of love

An injection for a supply I'd been mercilessly
cut off from

It didn't work.

In the time we'd spent apart, he'd become a surfer
up in San Luis Obispo

and had developed a penchant for getting high
at 5 in the morning

I spent my time with him mainly:
a. not eating
b. checking the status of my hip bones
c. hiding from his alpha roommates

I'd wander around town cosplaying as a girl next door
hitting up TJ Maxx

like a normal American girl
in a normal American world

Far from a singing career, close to
failure

I was a
bulimic
college

dropout

with

no family.

Except there was a family.

My Mum, who I called in desperation
to book my plane ticket home.

Things went sour fast and my high school sweetheart
turned to aspartame dust

I took the train to Hollywood (like a cliché) and drove
the Amtrack like I was in the lap of luxuré

Relieved to have escaped the tension of a reunion gone
bad.

Hollywood Boulevard smelled like the apocalypse and
the pale winter light added to my feeling of
dissociation

of not being real anymore
of life being a numb game.
I could've died and not felt anything.

I spent my days visiting emo stores on
Melrose, dodging drug addicts on trains
and shopping at Forever 21

On my last night I caught my reflection, a silver light
bouncing off ribs protuding crudely from my back

It was then that I realized the jig was up.

My plan to be thin hadn't worked.
I didn't make him love me.

Years later, we meet again at the Roosevelt Hotel,
two old friends sharing the same soul connection

we'd had in high school. He told me when he'd seen
the 'Hollywood' video he'd felt sick.

Because I'd achieved my dreams. Because I wasn't a lunatic.

And somehow it healed a forgotten part of me.
He was the only one I'd ever told about my dreams.

I was no longer a victim. I had been redeemed.
No longer a dropout. He had seen me succeed.

And finally, I wasn't who I was at seventeen anymore