Megan Cannella

The Price is Right

I tell you that the older I get
the less livestock I’m worth.

With you, I can measure
my anxiety in livestock --

a language other than the positive self-talk
my therapist and tiktok are trying to get me to accept --

You’ve known me since I was worth
the better part of a farm.

With some mix of love and pity
and a time long gone, you reassure:

I’d still pay three goats for you

With some mix of resignation and indignation
and a time long gone, I study my body in the mirror:

These tits are surely still worth more than three goats.

cw: food/restrictive eating

What do you do
when your comfort meal laughs in your face
and makes you gag?

1. Start watching when everyone has a husband
2. Watch until they are all single

Slade will somehow end up in a committed relationship.
This will show your broken brain that anything is possible.

1. Plop some cottage cheese in a bowl.
2. Sprinkle everything bagel seasoning on it.

You deserve it.

Sometimes, the smell of my body getting older
is the smell of my mother’s body just existing.

The t-shirt I sleep in and sweat in and don’t wash nearly enough
sometimes smells sweet and sour--like a nostalgia that isn’t entirely mine.

I am convinced
there is something generational

about the way
I’m settling into my body.

Once upon a time,
I was just an egg

in the ovary
of the fetus

tethered to my grandmother’s life force.
Now, when I bleed,

my bathroom smells of the rusting iron
that used to flow from my mother.