and already

a small amount

of blood.

I think about Pick saying,

Who are you?

I think of the night before and the voice of the stranger.

Get ’em next time, Fatboy.

I remember more now,

images of jeans too tight

and shirts poking out in weird places

and names that I must have pushed far away.

I remember New York

and the grandparents always declaring

how skinny my cousins are.

I think about how

this is summer,

and we are at the beach.

And everyone sees me as fat.

Teeth gritting,

I feel it like a burn,

my hands to my sides,

the thumbnails now

pushing down

on the same spot

push

press

until the ache is overwhelming.

I feel the control of it,

the pain

working its way into my blood.

I watch myself do this

in the old mirror.

press

my face sweating

skin pale

I do this

until the blood comes

over my fingernails,

and I don’t stop

until it hurts so much

I scream.

I hear the others hearing me.

I want them to.

I squeeze harder.

press

push

squeeze

I feel my face flush with tears

that fill my eyes until

the mirror fades into mist,

the sky dark.

I am falling,

I think,

falling down.

I feel my shirtless body scrape

along the wood door,

I feel the sudden relief of pain stopping.

Sometime later,

I open my eyes

and I am on

top of my sleeping bag.

I see Pick sitting by the counter.

My mother is holding my hand,

and her face is wet with tears.

I feel an ache in my sides.

When I look down, I see

the pain has turned purple.

What happened? I ask.

My mother looks at me,

grips my hand.

She doesn’t answer.

Doctor

Sometime after the incident,

as my mother now refers to it,

she takes me to the doctor,

a psychiatrist.

We drop off Pick,

make plans to see him soon,

and drive from Marin

back to San Francisco.

The car is silent the rest of the way.

I don’t know what to say,

but she tries to fill the quiet

with plans and questions.

We are going on a diet,

she says. It’s time, she says.

She tells me about

how she used to take a pill,

no bigger than a pin,

that kept her

from getting hungry,

kept her awake,

helped her see things

in a whole new way.

I painted all night, she says.

I don’t even remember how it happened.

She tells me about

filling galleries

with paintings,

department stores

with hand-painted dresses.

But first, she says,

we need to talk about what happened.

We climb up and down

San Francisco streets

until we get there.

The doctor’s office

is like an apartment.

We wait in stinky chairs,

watch two little boys

destroy a puzzle,

their mom deep

in the world of her phone.

The doctor is kind and old.