The Weight of Bones

Becca was 5'7" and weighed eighty nine pounds.
Almost all of that, it seemed, was the weight of bones,
the muscle having wasted,
the dry, thin skin having drawn drum tight in places, but hanging loose in others.
She evoked images of a lampshade I’d seen in a book about Adolf Eichmann.
A lampshade made of human skin.

Her illness was such that she couldn't see it.
To her she was always almost thin enough.
It was that little roll of flesh there, on her belly.
"See?"
"That's skin," I told her. "You don't have an ounce of fat on you.”
She grinned.
“You've got to stop,” I said. “Or you're gonna die."

She'd heard it all before.

She had a picture of herself as a waif in mind.
A delicate little princess.
"Tiny," she explained. “Beautiful.”
"That's not you," I told her. "You’re beautiful, but God made you bigger."
"We'll see," she said, and she excused herself, probably to shove a finger down her throat.

Seeing no other way, her body rebelled.
It stopped menstruating.
It grew a pelt of down like hair.
It swelled at the joints.
It became dehydrated
and instigated a fecal impaction.
She spent a week in the hospital.
The saline seemed to plump her up.

Ironically, she loved to cook and wanted to feed us,
but nobody could stand to look at her anymore.
Nobody could stand to watch an animated corpse
adding spice to stir fry or buttering fat whole wheat muffins it didn't dare eat.
As far as I know, Becca gradually dissolved in the bath
like a tissue in water,
or perhaps went skittering across the landscape
like the seed of a dandelion.