Conversations with my better half by Lora Luquet

You’re not here with me right now. When’s the last time you’ve eaten?

I ate enough. I’m paying attention.

I’m paying attention, I promise.

What’s enough to you? I have a feeling your definition of enough isn’t mine. You should be eating three meals a day. Full meals. Filling meals. You promised.

I ate enough to stay alive.

I’m alive, aren’t I?

Barely.

I’m barely enough. I could be more.

I could be made whole if I was less.

I can’t be less if I eat more and

I’m functioning fine.

I’m alive aren’t I?

Why do you have to look like the people you see online? You know those photos are edited right? Studies show—

I don’t give a fuck what studies show.

I’ve seen real people, in real life

who look like that and that means I can, too.

I can.

What if you can’t? What if you’re not biologically made to look that way? What if the way you look right now, the way you were born and the way you’ve grown is all you have, and it’s beautiful.

Can’t you see that?

Then I’ll die trying.

I don’t want you to die. If you die, I die.

You know that.

I don’t want you to die either.

So, eat.

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“‘Conversations with my better half’ began as a writing exercise in an advanced poetry class. I was interested in the concept of a poem written in the form of a conversation with a clear back-and-forth, but every time I tried to mess with the formatting of it, I hated it more and more. I submitted it for our in-class workshops, and sharing such intimate and personal work with my classmates made me recede into my shell just a little bit. I never touched it again until now.”

Lora Luquet (she/her) is a writer from New Orleans, Louisiana. She recently graduated from Northwestern State University of Louisiana with a B.A. in Communication and a minor in English. She can be found on Instagram at @draculoralu.