I Ate A Pebble For Breakfast Poem by Yiling Ding

I ate a pebble for breakfast
A stone for lunch
And a boulder for dinner.
Usually the same mass of food
would run through my body
and accumulate loosely on my hips,
my thighs, my butt and my midriff.
Today, however, these rocky monsters
sit firmly in my stomach,
unwilling to budge.

That's probably why my stomach hurts,
why my limbs are feeling heavy,
and why my body no longer moves.
My head is pounding with
the pagoda that sits upon it
more than seven stories high.
My shoulders are bearing
the whole damned world
that Atlas had to hold.
And now my core muscles are
too busy holding my stomach taut
lest it burst apart.
There is nothing left in me
to bloody hold me together
and to help me stand.

And when the rain beats down
like eternal damnation
and hateful acid tears,
I know that I am dying slowly
and then all the rocks I thought I ate
start bursting out of me,
Eager children of my messed up head
with all too much immensity
such that they, too, now exceed their mother.