Shut Up and Listen

Pretty Little Bones

Pretty little bones, they said to me.
I lied in bed every night listening to the tapping and racking of bony fingers against bony thighs.
I closed my eyes, high on the feeling of emptiness.
I remember being full on a breakfast of two small oranges and the egg white of a boiled egg (107 calories), suffocating in history, and feeling like my body would implode.
Days would drag on unless I attached a number to it.
500? 600? 100? Maybe more. Maybe less.
It was a game I enjoyed to play, a single player who challenged death and life like I'd only teater in between.
I smiled my way through the halls, listening to the knutz and bolts inside of me scratch against each other as they shriek for food.
I didn't need food. I didn't need to feel like a swaying ocean full of dying fish and empty calories.
I needed to feel wanted. That's all I ever wanted.
But being wanted meant I needed to deserve it- my body didn't deserve it.
I was a body and soul- separated like my soul deserved the casket of an angel.
It needed tight flesh and white flawless bones to be called perfect and lovely.
They say I was born this way, like I wanted a permanent calculator engraved into my brain.
As if being good at math made up for the lacking intellect of nutrients.
As if I asked for an array of flaws and begged for small space and bruises.
If you ran your hand against my collarbone, you'd feel the roughness of your palm making its way through heaven.
See, I was an open book- no secrets except for the guilty pleasure of purging as if I could rid myself of every part I hated.
My legs. My arms. My cheeks. My stomach.
I would press my hands so far up into my rib cage, I could feel my heartbeat like a hummingbird.
Doesn't that sound beautiful?
Being compared to a small, fragile bird was a dream. A dream I secretly dreaded.
I wanted nothing more than to stop being a part of it.
I was a cliche actress trying to make a name for myself in the halls of high school- as if it would matter.
But I only mattered when I found my name engraved into the gravel long before my death.
Because they said I was dying.
I didn't believe I was dying.
I believed I was surviving.
And it didn't matter to me when lost friends found their way back to me or when my parents stopped throwing passion into the fire.
I was only getting higher.
I was only starting to matter.
Because people only care if you're pretty or dying.