I think the girl who sits behind me in Algebra is starving herself again.
Her skin the color of waxed paper,
Translucent as parchment,
And just as thin.

Her eyes have lost their shine.
Brilliant ocean blue,
Dulled to sea mud.

The bags under her eyes
Like a watercolor painting.
Swirls of indigo and mauve
That no amount of sleep could fade.

Strands of her golden brown hair,
Sparkle from their resting place on the floor.
She’s never sick,
But sniffles a million times a day.
She hopes it will mask the sound,
Of her stomach crying out.

She used to softly kick the back of my chair,
Now her feet stay firmly planted on the ground.

She tugs at her billowing sleeves.
And pulls at her long tops,
To keep them from riding up,
And exposing her ivory, frigid skin. 

The girls comment she looks “Skinny”,
The boys comment she looks “Pretty”.

She eats and drinks by herself,
“Drinks” referring to cold water falling
Into the empty pit that is her stomach.
And “Eats” referring to the feeling of adrenaline
From months of under-consuming calories.

The word “lunch”
Has disappeared from her extensive vocabulary.
So has “pretty”.
As has “help”.
She used to paint vast landscapes through her words,
but her watercolors now say
“I’m fine”
Written in a million shades of grey.

No one has noticed,
Not even her closest friends.
They chat durning lunch,
And giggle during break.

They don’t see that she stares into space,
At the brightly colored wall that doesn’t exist.
A wall,
So ornate
It intrigues her more every day.
Every day, staring a little longer.
Wondering how long it will take,
Until the wall disappears with her in tow.

They don’t notice she never wears leggings,
The spandex wouldn’t hide her hollow hips.
They don’t notice she never eats.
The calories wouldn’t hide her hollow face.
They only notice her small waist,
And her XS jeans.

She has a boyfriend.
She’s hidden this from him.
Her boyfriend knows her body up and down,
Yet never asks why her spine
Sticks out like thorns on a dying rose.

Her mother is busy,
Her father is at work.
They never question her tiny cut vegetables,
They only shun her for her failures,
And never congratulate her on her wins.

They don’t realize,
Last semester when her A’s dropped to C’s,
Her weight dropped too.
From healthy,
To fainting.
From happy,
To waiting.
For the numbers to drop,
On the scale,
Her only companion.

Her teacher asked what happened,
On the last test.
Was she supposed to fess?
She failed because she spent all night,
Awake,
Thinking how she wanted to fade.
Away from here,
To a place where she could feel prettier. 

Her teammates are too distracted
With good grades and first dates,
Too preoccupied to notice,
The lack of space her body occupies.

This has happened before,
She told everyone she had recovered,
She looked it.
Everyone thought she meant it,
But recovery isn’t just counting time instead of calories.

We are all fighting our own demons,
But, that girl who sits behind me in algebra,
She happens to be losing.

Loosing a battle,
One can not win alone.
Yet her friends,
Her family,
Don’t notice that they are loosing her,
To the demons in her mind.

The girl who sat behind me in algebra is dead.
The girl who sat behind me in algebra has departed.
For so long she was here, 
And after fighting and fighting,
I finally got her to disappear.

For there was no real girl who sat behind me in algebra.
I created her to help me cope.
One to write through,
One to make myself understand
The pain I was putting myself through.

For the girl’s name was Anorexia Nervosa,
But her name had become synonymous with mine.

14 months long I had loved and befriended her.
But she tore my life apart.
So I had to tear her to pieces.
Pull her pale flesh from her brittle bones,
And take my name back.

Sometimes I gaze behind me in class and think,
I want to see her hollowed face again,
I want to feel her empty presence in my life.
But then I think about the freedom I now hold,
And that matters more to me,
Than any illness could ever bring.