They show you their
bodies if
you can say bodies
without that bitter taste
boiling into your mouth
choking gasping swallowing
realizing
they are not bodies,
they are molds

Their smallness hurts
my insides they
squirm and I think to myself
they are starving themselves.
Look at them
they are emaciated.

Do you believe me now
when I tell you they
are dying?

A dying breed -
no. That is not what I am
trying to say
they are not a fallen race
nor a fallen crest
a fallen ideal yes...

I watch the girl patiently
her eyes skimming the pages
of her mother's magazine
People
her little face contorted
looking at the pictures
and suddenly she
touches her hair
and pokes herself
and begins to cry
and her mother
takes the magazine away
and vows to never
let her near one
again -
but what is the sense in that?

Do you believe me now
when I tell you
the world is dying?

And still the pictures haunt my
eyes and I still see
them
and I still see
their ribs
poking
their molds
killing
them from the insides
and I counter...

these people are not
beautiful.