We had a game once that was never fun

That we called the backwards race

And you and I  competed

To see who could crumple

Their snacks into milliseconds

And erode away the purpose of eating

By seeing who could come last

I'll never quite know why it started

But we stopped as suddenly as we began

And perhaps it was because

Mum's face grew tight and fisted

When she heard the hairline fracture

Of all her cakes

Splitting down into shreds

And the neck-twitching mutation

Of a fork screaming against a plate

Or perhaps we grew up enough

To see that we never won anything

But wasted time

By clinging victory

But we stopped

Half a life-time later

I could have sworn you were limbering up

Cramping yourself against another start line

Harried by the peverse backwardness

Of your thinking

To race time and food into negatives once more

Only this time

You weren't racing me

But yourself

And whenever I debated trying to mute

The trigger of the starting pistol

I kicked myself in the back of the knee

With the words that fed me

The plethora of recycled lies

'Boys don't get anorexia'