Rubber Nooses

Maddie snaps rubber bands to wrists
redirecting and reverberating pain from
brain to skin to bone,
a tan rubber doctor's mallet
testing the reflexes of coping strategies instead of knees
(kill me please, please kill me, please)
2D hammer flat and golden beige
like the pancakes none of us eat
for the food challenge.
Hey doc, you, my voices, and your goal weight can go
fork yourself.

A patient steals one of my silver rings from my bedside -
I wonder if she tiptoed to me in the night and crept
away, jealous treasure tucked in the folds of her pocket gown
or twinkling dull beneath the pale white beam of the
nurse's flashlight for night checks.

Did she slip into my room mid-afternoon snack
while I was trapped at the eating-disorders table;
as much prisoner to the ritual of forced eating in a group
as the disorder slaved me to dancing its strange rhythms too.
Show the nurse my tongue: compliance pink to prove clozapine is swallowed -
not tucked as a loose tooth
in my cheek, as it were two days ago, again and last week
earning disciplinary action.

My tray as empty as my finger -
I'm on the nasojejenal tube.
Liquid 'medicine' trickling down,
silver pole my sole utensil.
I wish on all my wishbones to slice open the bag, expose it blue as veins to air
unwilling captive at this table of hostages struggling to draw breath
unsure of who's holding the knife
who's wielding, who's yielding, who's unwilling to let go
our mind minders - staff smiling like predators baring fangs over killing fields
silent war.

"I know you're tubed, but you have to be here to normalise eating"
but Ratchet with your plastic hospital cutlery hatchet and soggy peas,
there's nothing fucking close to cookie cutter normal about this.

Does the ring weigh heavy on her hand?
Tightening noose of guilt
grinding her knuckle into a luminous gibbous moon?

My fingernails show I'm blooded blue;
treacled circulation orbiting my vessels
bones of ice splintering, groaning, shattering with motion
waterbowed planks of wood without stars to guide it home.

Will the ring slide off her finger? Will she
rubber band it there -
the way I did; secure with seatbelts not as secure as the ward locks,
nor thick enough to fend her off.
Snap once holding pretty things close, at another
glance, inflicting a sharp whiplash on a wrist.

Later I see her wearing it - it's beautiful
on a light-fingered, less skeletal hand.
No rubber band required.