Sunday

a recovering bulimic breaks her new years resolution on easter sunday.

She closed her eyes and counted backwards from ten. A hiss eased from her throat, reminding herself to breathe but suck in your stomach! A sharp fingernail snapped between her teeth, bleeding tattered hangnails leaving smears of blood around her similar lips. Her other shaking hand traveled the terrace of her curves rolling with supple, subtle muscles, pressing, kneading out all the dough she had so purposefully consumed.

Four months, twenty four days.

With a breath, she faced the red line swaying between her feet. 120.

Eighteen pounds, four months, twenty four days.

It was too much. Her skin felt tight, stuffy, hot so so hot like a space suit without oxygen. She was being crushed by the atmosphere, suppressed by her own flesh, how was she supposed to breathe when there was no room for lungs?

‘Oh, God,’ she thought. ‘Get out, get me out.’

She began to cry and then she began to choke, choke back all the regret; suffocate the perseverance resting in her mind. She started to pray but the prayer became a confession, a confession of personal sins and binges of freedom, gushing from her heart and stomach, bringing fires of the f*****g depths up her throat, condemning her before she could make a stifled sound, something like an apology with a fist in her mouth and crucifix burning her tongue.

Empty. She heaved dryly over her own secrets, intestines, and nerve endings coiling and hissing, slimy like snakes but brittle to the touch. They grew like dead leaves in her throat, tearing holes in her esophagus with tightly spiraled branches. They would float away if she breathed too hard or spoke too loud.  

Light. She leaned into a waterfall of relief, cold, cold and comforting, cold and crisp and sharp. The ocean that filled her mouth collided with her teeth, clanking like silver coins or armor on an empty battlefield. She slid on ballet-slipper feet  to the only thing she’d ever seek acceptance from, never a word, before she even stepped on it marked her as nothing: the ultimate goal. 118.

Horror. All consuming, no escape, dying too slowly, get it over with, please now. Horror. She threw herself to her knees, look at the drama queen, nothing left to sacrifice but the hot air in her mind. She unscrewed the hinges behind her ears and pulled her hair away from her face. Snapping her brain stem like a charred sprig between her fingers, she lifted out a cotton candy brain, sugary and too sweet to digest or stomach or acknowledge. It floated away, a cloud in the dark night and as she listlessly waved goodbye, a sigh rose from her aching lungs.

114. 

Author's Note

not much editing so the rhythm is a little rough i'm just lazy no one will read this anyway