We're counting down. My friends and I.
Forty-five is my favourite but it tastes a bit like bile. Ignored.

I wake from the cold and the empty. I dreamed of eating chicken, and I cried.
It will go downhill from here, as I get naked in front of the mirror. My head disagrees as I stand up. I fall blind against the wall, but images return like little glitter christmas cards.
Perfect purple fingers on my left hand. Right hand calloused and hidden in a sloppy joe. Does it engulf me? I don't want to hide. I am going to disappear.
I walk with billowing clothes and I never felt more beautiful.
I smile as David watches me complete my routine by Anzac Square. 7:30am. The bus stop. Sandwich - Bin. Muffin - Bin. Juice - Bin. Diet Coke - In. I have one for morning tea, and one for lunch, and sometimes fruit. Sometimes.
It exorcises my body mass, the ritual of it.

People watch me with my calculator in the library. I put a number on every day, on every step, on every smell. I have it worked out perfectly. I have it...

I smile angles at my friends. My friends that don't speak to me anymore.
They balloon and bubble, but I am serene. Smiling, swimming, drawing angles.
The bones on my back help me get back to breathing.
I show them my body to make them believe me. They don't need to speak to express understanding.

I creep back and the woman is screaming again and I smile angles at her too. She spits at them, terrified.
I am powerful. Forty-five is my favourite and she knows.
She leaves grapes on the bench and runs away from me.
She isn't looking. She isn't-

I look at the grapes but there are no grapes left and feel each one burn through my body like disease. I am an animal, panicked and poisoned, I am disgusting. I sink and heave. I am nothing. I am chained and coarse. I am impossibly large. I am infinite.

I am disgusting. I feel them leave. Up, up and away. I saved myself, my different heads tell my different bodies. I'm all detached but I flush the toilet and suddenly I'm back together.

The woman is screaming again. You are disgusting. She stands, smelling grapes and guilt. Serenity.
I smile angles again as I leave her to rot. I stole all her cookbooks, to read and to dream. I bake and I bake and I stir and I shake. I give it away (forty-five is my favourite). I have never eaten my own cooking.

I visit my best websites. Calculator in hand. Homework for tomorrow. I shake, cold and afraid. She cooks dinner with oil and screams again. I count to fifty on the floor, but I'll do it again in an hour.
He sends me an email and I smile angles. Another fifty, for him.

Some blood fell into the basin today.
Forty-eight.
Forty-seven point three?
I'll never eat again.