claire christoff

health and nutrition for the modern girl

You’re supposed to drink 64 ounces of water a day
with something fermented in between. Lindsay
Lohan wasn’t allowed to have kombucha in rehab.
One sunny day in 2008, she stopped at 7-Eleven
for Dr. Pepper, Doritos, and two cartons of cigarettes
on her way to LAX. This is the shit I remember.

The girl sitting next to me on the bus is eating
gruel from a mason jar. Overnight oats, I guess,
but how hard is it just to cook them? Novelty
has made infants of us all. My parents got a set
of Wüsthof knives as a wedding gift in 1991
and I can barely feed myself with a spoon.

I’m off caffeine this month. I’m sober these days,
mostly. I eat sugar when it suits me, which is
always. Meat is murder but so is Amazon Prime
and no one cares. Tonight, I lick steak tartare
from my plate like a stray dog. The yolk leaks
into the mince like gold, like a rotten wound.

I dreamed I was at the store, squeezing grapes
through their plastic bag, and they were too soft,
too much give. I dreamed I was tearing recipes
from magazines with no intention of cooking.
I dreamed there was a new flavor of Soylent—
peanut butter—and woke up disappointed.

Claire Christoff lives, writes, and teaches in her home city of Indianapolis, Indiana. She is passionate about pop culture, the human body, and the points at which they intersect. Her previous work has appeared in The Hairpin and Entropy and is forthcoming in Passages North and Grist. Follow her on Twitter: @clairexoff.