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a. i can hardly see her skin through the bones.
the girl i love is ensnared, hopelessly trapped inside her ribcage, her shoulder blades, her femurs.

her bones are white as the milky way. she is paper-crane delicate, and she is killing herself just to live.

we will cry at her funeral.

i. today, she looks over at us and smiles sadly.
"that must take a lot of effort," you whisper to me.
"what, smiling?" i ask. she has turned away, and i stare at the ginger highlights in her silky mahogany hair.
"no," you say quietly, "or, well, yes, in a way. i meant being kind in general, when she's starving."
we look directly into each others' desperate eyes. literally, each of us is thinking.

she walks over to us, graceful as a ballerina, her hair swaying slightly.
"hey guys, how are you?"
we both nod, grinning, to avoid answering. you take a step forward to hug her.
i focus on her bony wrist, thinking about how i could wrap my fingers all the way around it and have room to spare.
the room makes me want to cry, the something-is-missing, the emptiness which wasn't there before, when she was who she was supposed to be. whole. she's making herself hollow and hollow is beautiful but it is not right.
but i'd love to hold her wrist anyway. skin and bones.
it would be like holding her heart.

it is my turn to hug her. i am gentle with her, afraid that i might accidentally hurt her. she is clinically underweight, has a body mass index of 14 point something. she is fragile.
embracing what little is left of her, i know i am holding her
world.

x. "yesterday when i was changing, i looked in the mirror," she told me a couple months ago. "i'd just eaten a lot so i was feeling pretty disgusting, you know. but then i looked at myself, and i realized that i could clearly see my ribs."
i had that feeling of sinking down, of having my head forced underwater, and for a minute or so, everything was blurry. my muscles ached suddenly. it's tiring to swim - it's exhausting to drown.
"sweetie, that's not... healthy. you aren't supposed to see your ribs."
you nodded, looking down.
"that's what i've heard, yeah," she replied. "but the thing is, i'm still so fat. i'm still so ugly."
she started crying softly, and i draped my now tense arm over her shoulders. desperately, i wished i could help her, save her, magically make her better.
"you are anything but ugly," i assured her. "you're, well, gorgeous."
that just made her sob harder.
"thank you," she muttered, "but i'm really not."
"yes," i insisted, "you really are. have you even seen yourself?"
she looked right into my eyes, almost glaring.
"sorry, but i'm uglier than i seem."

e. later that day, i finally told you how i feel about her.
you just looked at me, with tears in your eyes.
"fucked up world we live in, isn't it?" you mumbled after a while.
i laughed.
all three of us were cracking under the strain because there was only so much we could take. you and i could take life. she couldn't.
we could take our own lives, but not hers.

she can't take life. the question is, can she take her life?

r. one day, you told me you had made yourself throw up.
"if she thinks she's fat," you explained, "just imagine how awful i must look."
i told you you don't need to be thin to be beautiful. one has nothing to do with the other.
you never purged again, i made sure of that. i wasn't about to lose you, too. i needed you and frankly you needed you too, and i was going to make sure we had you, safe and sound and healthy as could be.

o. that was a year and a half ago.
since then she has seen three psychologists, two psychiatrists, five nutritionists, and two pediatricians specialized in teenage girls, as well as her regular doctor.
she trusts us, and talks to us about her eating disorder every now and again. she doesn't drag it out, just states some thoughts, some feelings, some facts.

"so i just weighed myself, i've lost a few more pounds."

"god, i almost fainted at the gym yesterday."

"my mother cried at dinner again last night. i wish she would stop doing that, i mean, she really needs to get used to it. i am starving myself and that is that."

"i can't stand my mirror. seriously, someday soon i am going to smash that fucking thing. maybe then i can be happy."

"i think i'm going to skip lunch today. i'm sorry."

n. after three weeks you lost patience and confronted her, told her straight-out that she clearly had an eating disorder and needed help.
she glared at you, and said,
"it's none of your fucking business, okay? leave me the hell alone."
you looked down at the ground because you felt uncomfortable and didn't know what to say. the last thing you ever wanted to do was hurt her.
i looked down at the ground too, because i felt devastated and destroyed and ripped apart into a million little pieces. and i didn't know what to do.

she made it up with you a few days later, apologized for losing her temper, you mumbled that it was okay and you understood, even though you didn't.
then, taking a deep breath, looking at the ground because she was simply terrified, she admitted,
"i'm anorexic."
both of us nodded and thought, trust me, i know.
"i just can't stop thinking about how fat i am, and how ugly i am, and how pretty i would be if i were thin. that's why i'm doing this, it makes me feel better to know that sooner or later i'll look okay."
"you are pretty," i choked out, staring intently at her lovely upturned nose. "and you should trust me on this one," i added, trying and failing to fake a smile, "i am a lesbian after all."
she looked up at me and fake-smiled right back.
"i'm ugly as sin, don't bother lying to me," she replied.
"no, you really aren't," you sighed, "you're beautiful."
"thank you," she muttered, her chocolate eyes fleeing back down to fixate on her nails, "but i'm really not."
then she smiled, and added,
"but i will be, one day. and then you can be proud of me."
we didn't know what to say after that.

a. it started a year and a half ago. or, well, no, it started much longer ago than that, but it hadn't manifested yet. it had just been infiltrating her brain, like a virus contaminating a computer.
diseasing her.
she and i were 14 years old, you were already 15.
and i was already in love with her.
i never told her so, though. i wanted to keep her so badly as a friend that i didn't want to risk losing her entirely.

it was april and we were in the school cafeteria, eating lunch. i finished my tray, you ate most of yours. but she had about four bites, before saying,
"you know, actually, i'm not feeling too good. i think i may be sick."
we looked from her almost-untouched food to her pale face to her shimmering eyes, and believed her.
she stood up and walked away without glancing back.

but then she didn't eat much the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. on the friday of that week you called me, and said,
"i'm worried about her."
"so am i," i muttered. you didn't know i was in love with her either, so i had to be careful. "she's barely eaten all week."
there was a silence.
"i think she's anorexic," you stated.

my mom didn't understand why i sobbed so hard that night, staring up at the plastic stars on the ceiling, after everyone else had gone to bed.