Channel: Savannah Brown

Category: People & Blogs

Tags: savannah brownsavanamazingslam poemanorexiaspoken wordslam poetrybulimiaeating disorderssavannxhbpoetry

Description: closed captions are available on this vid! turn them on if you'd like to follow along. read me: hello! this is a poem i wrote called 'skinny girls bleed flowers.' i think this is by far the most personal and revealing spoken word poems. when i was 16 i was diagnosed with anorexia purging-type which is essentially a weird horrible anorexia/bulimia hybrid, but i've been struggling with disordered eating and body image issues for about five years. this poem is about the romanticization of eating disorders (often among young girls) and the pretty much horrifying reality of dealing with what is often seen as a 'cute, dainty' disorder on a day-to-day to basis, as well as the association of eating disorders (anorexia especially) with young, pretty white girls. a n y o n e can have an eating disorder, regardless of age or gender or race or anything else. they are not something to 'try out,' they are not diets, they're scary and destructive and can leave damage behind that often stays with people for the rest of their lives. my links: insta: instagram.com/savbrown twitter: twitter.com/savannahbrown website: savbrown.com i wrote a novel: amazon.co.uk/Truth-About-Keeping-Secrets/dp/0241346304 also a poetry book: amazon.co.uk/Graffiti-other-poems-Savannah-Brown/dp/152721219X words: these are not monsters. there are no monsters here. these feel like love, and when they creep inside you it’s like something once missing is finally coming home. how could a monster make such pretty girls? pretty girls, pretty skinny girls, they look like everything that is wonderful about being alive, like vodka diet cokes and pictures of hip bones at the beach and all i’ve eaten for the past three days is my own fingernails and these monsters (not monsters) can make you pretty too. you’ll learn to make jokes about why you’re slicing the five strawberries you brought for lunch (and breakfast, and dinner) into twenty-five pieces. lifting the morsels from perfectly folded napkin with delicate crackling fingers to hesitant tongue and when the jokes get too cumbersome, and taste too much like nourishment, like letting go, like happiness, learn to put an end to lunch, forget what it means and by the end of your last year of high school you’ll know every spot in the building where no one will ask where your friends are and why you look so tired. the monsters (not monsters) will share their secrets. you’ll learn that needle-thin bones, when crushed into a fine paste and stirred into the twenty glasses of water you were going to drink today taste like lemonade and you can have a sip for only the cost of the rest of your life spent worshiping the feeling of hollow searching up number and number and dead girl and number you, too, can spend the rest of the day smelling of what you just had to scrub off the bathroom floor. go, they’ll say, outstretching manicured hands, bottle cap wrists— memorize menus and all the lies you could tell spend hours at the grocery store counting fifty one hundred two hundred no more than three or else suddenly your thighs begin to inflate like the balloons from all the birthday parties you couldn’t go to you will learn to avoid celebration because celebration means food you will spend christmas day fanaticizing about burying your dissolving teeth into your knuckles until your heart stops. the not-monsters will feed you your first cigarette and your second, and your tenth. they will leave your once shiny hair in a clump on your pillowcase, just for you. and when your body gets too weak, it starts to crumble, but where sick breaks skin sunflowers will grow. an entire garden will force itself from your empty stomach billowing out your mouth and you’ll choke but you’ll be happy because at least you’re not eating you’ll decompose until you cannot be differentiated from all the skeletons that have been living in your closet don’t you wish you could shrink don’t you wish you could have that control don’t you wish you could make your mom cry because she just doesn’t get why you’d do this you don’t get why you’d do this you’re smart but you just googled how many calories are in tooth paste the pretty girls pretty skinny girls pretty skinny girls pretty dying girls pretty dead girls the parasite can be restrained but not destroyed. but no matter. it’s a beautiful thing to be made of porcelain. the picture of your hip bones at the beach was worth it. business enquiries can be sent to brown.c.savannah@gmail.com.