A recent study found that every sixty-two minutes,

someone dies as a direct result of an

eating disorder. When the hand keeps ticking and the scales

keep tipping we’re left with the fact that eating disorders

have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.

Tell me this is a phase.

Tell me this isn’t a big deal.

Tell me an hour

of high school health class is enough

to teach us the reality behind the Lifetime movies.

Enough to tell a diet from

a death wish.

We idolize the results of pain but shame the pain itself.

We see headlines

Lacey Smarr, 15 dies from heart attack
Catharine Nuno, 18 dies from cardiac arrhythmia
Sarah Siskin, 19 dies from cardiac arrhythmia
Max Briles, 26 dies from heart damage

but we don’t see the part where they

asked for help.

Where they did everything right.

Forty percent of people with eating disorders

who have received treatment do not recover. Now

what the fuck are the people who

don’t even get that chance supposed to do?

I am twenty years old;

older than Sarah but younger than Max

and maybe this is why I thought we needed another

eating disorder poem.

Or maybe I’m tired of seeing fifteen-year-olds die.

Maybe I’m tired of seeing a person

become a problem

that everyone is too afraid to solve.

A problem we’re still afraid to talk about

because it’s not like this is a big deal.

It’s not like a classroom worth of people will

be dead by end of day. It’s not like

this is something we can prevent.

This is what it looks like to see a fifteen-year-old

die of a heart attack. This is what

it looks like to be

named epidemic and then forgotten.

This is what it looks like to

become a headline.

This is a call to arms

to help us put our weapons down.

To please

help us make it another hour.

To please

look at this

as something worth talking about.

To please

at least

talk about us

once we’re dead.