Getting Better.

You will master the backwards step onto the scale.
It is scary at first. You are quivering and thin
and always, always cold. It takes faith to step up
backwards, it is hard not to twist your little bird neck
towards the metal shudder of the scale weights.
She never writes the number down-- too risky, you
might see. You will memorize your silhouette in
creased paper gowns that tie at the small of your back,
the way it stiffly sinks into the trenches that your collarbones make.
You think you look almost Amazonian-- broad at the top,
a triangle of torso.
You are no warrior.
The nurse will tell you later that
you are green and blue. Your hair falls out in clumps.
Hospital socks-- they are thick and grey. You cannot shave
your legs. You cannot throw up your cereal. It is a
sterile hell, a secret cave for the very barely living
to rest the sharp bones that push against their skin like
fingers against fabric. Haunting girls, gaunt faces,
and in the morning you bend over with your side to the
mirror to count ribs through your back.
And there they are, relief, like tiny ripples.

You will horde little things--batteries, dry-erase markers, paper clips--
to drop through the gap that forms between your thighs when you
sit down you must do this every hour.
Just to reassure yourself
that they can still fit through, that you have not magically expanded.
And the truth is, you are magically expanding. It's inevitable.
You are gaining weight or dying. Soon, the way your
kneebones touch, the way you fit your fingers beneath your ribs, the
jagged edges of your wrists, your chin--
all these things soften, You are no longer pure angles and
the rhythm of a steady pulse is heart-wrenching.