In white houses

Ten years old and all softness and innocence, thick hair and a round belly. I am carefree and calloused palms, my hands are painted in colors from handfuls of candy and evenings spent outside with sidewalk chalk. My parents tell me to watch what I am eating, their words are all sweetness and artificial flavor, and even though they are supposed to be healthy, they leave a bitter aftertaste. I begin to measure, the number of times I can tie a jump rope   around my neck just to gag these awful thoughts, how many cups of food I can throw down the drain and get away with, how many strands of hair I can watch fall from my dead mind. How to lose twenty pounds in three weeks: Week 1. Throw out your heart and lose seven pounds instantly, you will not want it anymore when you lie for the ninth time in one day, when your sister catches you crying at the kitchen sink as you throw out your favorite food. Week 2. Lose four pounds as you spend an hour in the bathroom cleaning out all the messy thoughts from your hairbrush, all the tangled strands of hair and you can only feel your skin tearing on the bristles, you are supposed to be beautiful but suddenly everything is so messy, all numbers and losses. Week 3. Lose nine pounds and nine hours of sleep when your body shakes so much as you try to sleep that you wonder when rocking yourself to sleep become a lullaby, when time started to eat you away. Your entire life will just become weeks and numbers, lessons on how to end your life quicker. But now, the only numbers I count are the number of years I lost, all those hours I spent hoping my stomach would collapse on the empty shell I called my body, all those minutes I was only falling deeper into a grave of the person I once was. And now, I remember that the only flowers I received were to mourn all the things  I wasted, opportunities and  tastes, all the lost relationships and torn up skin. And now, the only memory I miss is when I still had time, when I should have been outside rather than locked up in my own mind, when I should have been reading books instead of diet plans, when I could have been learning more about people rather than a body’s damn metabolism.