once upon a time
a fairy light haired and blue eyed
vision of a girl took her life,
(I could already see it coming)
in a shining suite where she choked,
not on fairy cakes and apples,
but on an abundance of pills.
there was no peaceful sleep
of ever after.
no envy on anyone’s part,
very hush-hush.

her sister-cousin
with a double digit waistline
(do we have to pity her
just for that?)
and a pill-popping,
cancer stick habit,
suffering in a swamp city heat
languishes pill by pill
until an almost reenactment (the beginning!)
scares her back into living -
a peek in the back didn’t give a clue to that.

Miles starves and binges,
sleeps and sleeps,
(don’t we all?)
lusting for her second best friend
“he can’t love a fat girl”
doesn’t she know,
skinny girls are just lucky.

we too have sugar coating our lips,
caramelizing the inside of our mouths,
medicine and liquor
coating our stomachs.
smoke burning our tattered lungs.
fear tearing at our thoughts.
don’t blame us.

we can lose people, too.
there’s more than one way to die.