Have you ever been hungry,
so hungry that you couldn’t eat?






I stare in the mirror. As she gazes back through me. Pointing out my every flaw, my every grotesque feature.


She stands next to me. Her fingers light as air on my skin. She is what God intended humans to look like. I see the extra skin hanging from my waist, my gigantic stomach, my flabby arms, and my massive thighs. I turn to the side, she makes me behold the waves of flesh that hang from my body.


“If you take a scalpel and let it skate down you, Crisco and Twinkie filling would come flooding out. Your arms are made of butter, your legs are constructed of titanic boats of gravy. You bleed strawberry syrup. You are fat. No amount of lipo suction can save you now. FATTY.” She purrs in my ear.



My body is


H

E


A


V


Y








I am not one of
those perfect plastic people.


The ones where you can count their ribs, a xylophone that plays a true melody.





See their hip bones, mountains that have a breath taking view from the summit.

Or the deep arches of their collar bones, they put the St. Basil’s cathedral to shame.




Those are war medals worth a parade.
She deserves a parade.

She is beautiful.
I am not her.
I am fat, gross, and disgusting.
I am a failure.


“Fat and skinny had a race
All around the pillow case
Fat fell down and broke her face
Skinny said ha-ha you’re just a
Waste”
Words taste sweeter when they fall from her mouth.





I stand here empty and naked. My stomach demands food, starving like the poverty stricken children of third world countries. I ball my fist and bite my lip. Her eyes never stop piercing my flesh.




Fear eats away at me when I lay in bed at night. I pray for sleep, for nightmares, for anything except the sickness from the reaper. He sits on the second shelf in my refrigerator, right next to the fat free milk. Just waiting for my moment of weakness. My body twitches with repulse as I crawl to the closet. She has her arms wrapped around my huge waist trying to pull me back. She tries to slap my hand away, but I win this time, it latches on to the week old stale, molded bread, hidden in the battered ratty old shoe box.







My stomach screams as the anger runs down my face. The ache resides in my skin, my bones, my very core. My whole body shakes falling to the ground, bowing to her pleading for her to show mercy. To let me indulged just this once. I let my tongue trace the edges of the bread as her sing song voice comes back to me. “Once on the lips forever on the hips.” My mouth waters. Then that picture comes back. Me standing in the mirror, next to her. I feel my arms, FAT. My legs, FAT. And lastly my stomach, FAT. She is sitting on my left shoulder. She sits on the divine side. She is my God. Her dainty legs pulled into her torso hiding her entire body behind two twigs. Her massive blue eyes looking through me as that smile dances on her lips. “That is why you will never be as strong as me. Strength is skinny, and you are gigantic.” I drop the bread as my body wails for the garbage. Then I jump up, fighting the dizzy spells. I run in place. Getting rid of the fat.


Getting rid of the never ending fear.


She coos on my neck
“Get rid of the idea of pain,
of death,
because when you are beautiful,
when you are thin,
nothing
can hurt you,
nothing.”


My heart begins to pound in my ears. My legs begin to buckle from the immense amount of weight resting on them.


“Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.”


I storm to the bathroom and kneel before the toilet. Her hand forces my finger to slither down my throat. My stomach releases it’s rage, gag by gag. The bile is robust, sweet, and my salvation. She finally lets me breathe as the rubies dance in the murky water. I lay my forehead on the porcelain, praying for forgiveness. “Gluttony is the worst of the seven deadly sins, my precious child. God cannot look lightly on the act of ruining the holy temple he created you in. How can you betray him like that?” Praying to have God make me beautiful.










To make me thin.


“Bones are beautiful,


Flesh is weak”

















Hail Mary full of grace
The Lord is with thee
Blessed art thou among skinnies
Blessed is thy fruit of thy womb, anorexics
Holy Mary mother of God
Pray for us fatties now and at the hour
Of our death

Amen


I slowly stand on the scale and wait for my judge, my jury, and my executioner.

She stands there with me, watching over my shoulder.


The needle stops. The verdict is in; “GULITY,” she chants in her Godly voice.
Eighty five pounds.



I stare in the mirror, as she gazes back through me.
Pointing out my every flaw. My every grotesque feature.




Have you ever been hungry,

so hungry you couldn’t eat?