There are six hundred and forty-six calories. All in your stomach. Wet, heavy, hard in your stomach. Six hundred and forty-six calories sitting and festering in your body.

Have to get it out. Cannot let it stay.

You look across the picnic table at him. He is watching too closely. His brow is furrowed.

Yes, yes, everything is fine.

Keep your voice calm when you say this, or else you will give yourself away. But keep your voice loud enough that it can be heard over the sound of the kids on the playground.

Yes, you are sure, everything is just great.

Everything is fine.

Six hundred and forty-six calories.

Wait for him to believe you. Wait for those dark eyes to soften like chocolate, those corners of his mouth to relax, those shoulders to loosen.

When they don’t, excuse yourself.

Get up slowly. Keep your breathing normal. Walk; do not run across the park. Wait until he is out of sight.

He has stopped pushing food in your direction. He has stopped taking you to restaurants. You only ate now to please him, to make him stop worrying.

You can’t even do that right.

Six hundred and forty-six calories

Now run.

Run until your body is on fire and you burn and break. Tear yourself apart with your breathing. Let pain stab your sides. Make your body scream for oxygen. Make your pulse trip over itself.

Six hundred and forty-six calories

Find the bathroom.

Kneel before the porcelain throne. The cold lid against your forehead. Eyes squinted shut, but tears still trailing down your face. Hands balled so that your nails break skin.

Six hundred and forty-six calories

Lift the lid. Wrap your mouth around your finger until you can touch the place in the back of your throat where you store all the things that you want to but cannot say.

Let yourself go.

Let the nights spent screaming into your pillows go.

Let the days of painted faces, painted lips, painted smiles go.

You are nothing but imperfections stitched together by pride, prayer and scar tissue.

Let the edges that you run against that raised stitching of your skin go.

Let his disappointed eyes go. Let the heavy weight that stays even when the food doesn’t go.

Let six hundred and forty-six calories go.

But it’s still there.

Fat, dripping from your skeleton. Fat, clinging to your skin. Fat, growing on you like a fungus.

You don’t deserve him.

Wrap your free arm around yourself. Squeeze until you feel the bones pressing through your skin.

You dream of unwrapping your body, tearing off skin, tossing fragments into the air until you are nothing but bones.

Beautiful bones,

Squeeze your arms tighter.

Let everything go again.

Watch it spiral down the drain.

Get up. Close the lid.

He is waiting for you outside the bathroom. Let him press a hand against your face. Let him call you lies—beautiful, loved, perfect.

Do not look into his eyes.
Do not look into his eyes. Instead, stick a piece of gum in your mouth, but do not say anything or he will smell the sour lie on your breath.

Inside, your body begins to devour itself.

Everything is fine.