sometimes i feel like the hours in my days are measured not in units of time, but in calories, minutes to my next meal, and hunger pangs.

there is a room in my mind
in which the clocks are made of mirrors,
detailing the time that it will take for my rib bones to make waves beneath my fingers,
for the corners of my elbows and my shoulders and my wrists to poke out from inside of my skin.

this is where i curl up to hide,
taking part in a ****** up form of transcendental meditation
in which my only mantra is an endless repetition of the reasons why i should not eat.

'you eat to live, you don't live to eat,' i chant,
running my fingers over my flesh and digging into the too-shallow hollows of my bones.

you look at me with laughter in your eyes and tell me that everybody feels like this, but i refuse to believe that everyone's body feels like a prison made of heavy bones and aching joints.

and if everybody feels like i do then, ****, i don't know what to do, because at least if i tell myself that i am all alone then i can pretend that i may someday be someone else with the bones of a sparrow and a tongue that doesn't try to tie itself into knots when it hasn't had enough to taste.

my voice won't stop creaking and i can't remember what i really sound like anymore,
and when you tell me i seem jumpy i have to pinch at my calves to try and stop my hands from shaking.

how am i supposed to get better at this when the only things that make me want to stay alive are the numbers on the scale and the space between my thighs?