French Fry

My father is pulling into a Wendy’s parking lot, littered
with shrivels of wind-filled bags and fists of napkins.
The basement in my bones earthquakes
when the car comes to a stop. My father
has ordered himself a giant magazine 
of fries––each one; a bullet cringed by its own weight.
I watch him scoop the ketchup with the watery tendon 
and reach out to offer me the gift––a gift not even the hospital
knew how to feed me, but my father is no hospital.
My father has always been a heavy-lifter, raises
the shelf for installation, asks me to hand him the screw,
fastens it to the wall
but can’t grip the steering wheel long enough. 
Can’t shake the carpenter from his hands until they become
Mickey Mouse.
Can’t move towards me without the fry becoming a slingshot that recoils when fired. 
My father     can’t cross the bridge between us
with the fry. My father’s eyes loosen and welt, as he tries 
to make out the last time he saw color in me––
tries to remember how summers ago he would drive 
by the same Wendy’s every day after picking me
up from choral camp and order us the biggest trumpet
of fries, each one, full with salt and acoustic, 
and my belly, full of arpeggios and glossy singer’s pride. 
Now my stomach is the forever well 
my father is calling my name down. 
You are so sick, he says.    My father. 
No magic left to sell me.       My father.
No way to ask me to eat, without giving me 
another opportunity to refuse the music. 
No way to watch me kill myself without pulling into a Wendy’s to tempt hell itself out 
of my wind-filled body. He watches, 
anticipation-emptied;
as a father would never say the word Anorexia without
believing his daughter’s ability to succumb to make-believe.

Because to believe I do, is to say I believe that this won’t kill me. 
I can be magic, Dad.
I can wind-fill my childhood if I want to. I can come home
from the hospital and drink the salts. I can hide
in the basement and not come out
for two days,     I can still
see you holding my dinner plate like a lunch tray in the museum of this beast. 

An eating disorder is a tool-less project. 
And it is mine. And there is no room
for your steady hand. 
My father,
you’re getting so old.
Just let me do this.

I could tell you this car is too full of a kind of love
that I have yet to understand-- is only doing what it knows.
Love is only doing what it knows.
You are only doing what you know.
But a daughter,    a daughter,      I don’t.