These Damned Ghosts Are All the Same

You don’t starve to suffer. You don’t
Starve to look good or just to starve.
You don’t starve to feel in control.

You starve to become something else.
You would prefer another way,
Swifter, painless. You understand

A certain subcategory
Of addicts may be attempting
To do the same. It isn’t death.

It isn’t death any of you
Are after, although you sometimes
Miscalculate and end up dead

Or embarrassingly near death
By mistake. Death’s transformation
Has been promised to you from birth.

You feel no need to seek it out.
But you want to be something else,
Not someone else, true, but alive.

So you starve yourself. Watch closely,
You tell yourself, watch for the signs—
Not the bones, the loose gums, dark eyes—

The inexplicable lightness
That arises like a bubble
That has no relation to scale,

A little joy, a floating thought
That you are here, you are still here
But now you’re only here to watch.