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iwatchedhimdieandicouldntsavehim
The way the light hit your skinny, pale body and made your veins seem ten times bluer, your skin was translucent, like I could see the sky in your blood instead of the torment.
The way the shadows from your green eyes seemed to pool in the new, sharp angles of your collarbone and throat and it was like I had only just realized I wanted to kiss you there and by then it was too late.
The way your hair looked full and healthy in the watery gray light seeping through the white place's windows, even though your hair was actually limp and stringy from bad soap and being too weary to shower for long, even though before you used to stay under the hot water for hours at a time.
The way your hands shivered sometimes, even though you were covered with four blankets, and your knuckles looked so bony and red with blood-blush against the thick fabric and you had the kind of hands that everyone wants to interlace with their own.
The callous on your ring finger from how you wrote (you wrote the same way I do) slowly faded after months of being in the white place that smelled like Mom's hands after she got home from work and I remember how when you were nervous you would rub it, the callous, like it was lucky.
The way your cheekbones stood out stark in your thin face and they were like cliffs that your tears jumped from and I remember tracing them like they were dots and my finger was a pencil and the light seemed to glint off them like they were billboards of suffering.
My friend who died from anorexia. I watched him die. I watched the ends of his limbs shake when life left them. But before that...I watched him grow thinner even though we tried to get him to eat, we tried so hard, but it wasn't enough and he died.