Carol Ann Duffy — The Diet

The diet worked like a dream. No sugar, salt, dairy, fat, protein, starch or alcohol. By the end of week one, she was half a stone shy of ten and shrinking, skipping breakfast, lunch, dinner, thinner; a fortnight in, she was eight stone, by the end of the month, she was skin and bone. She starved on, stayed in, stared in the mirror, svelter, slimmer. The last apple aged in the fruit bowl, untouched. The skimmed milk soured in the fridge, unsupped. Her skeleton preened under its tight flesh dress. She was all eyes, all cheekbones, had guns for hips. Not a stitch in the wardrobe fitted. What passed her lips? Air, water. She was Anorexia's true daughter, a slip of a girl, a shadow, dwindling away. One day, the width of a stick, she started to grow smaller - child-sized, doll-sized, the height of a thimble. She sat at her open window and the wind blew her away. Seed small, she was out and about, looking for home. An empty beer bottle rolled in the gutter. She crawled in, got drunk on the dregs, started to sing, down, out, nobody's love. Tiny others joined in. They raved all night. She woke alone, head splitting, mouth dry, hungry and cold, and made for the light. She found she could fly on the wind, could breathe, if it rained, underwater. That night, she went to a hotel bar that she knew and floated into the barman's eye. She slept for hours, left at dawn in a blink, in a wink, drifted away on a breeze. Minute, she could suit herself from here on in, go where she pleased. She stayed near people, lay in the tent of a nostril like a germ, dwelled in the caves of an ear. She lived in a tear, swam clear, moved south to a mouth, kipped in the chap of a lip. She loved flesh and blood, wallowed in mud under fingernails, dossed in a fold of fat on a waist. But when she squatted the tip of a tongue, she was gulped, swallowed, sent down the hatch in a river of wine, bottoms up, cheers, fetched up in a stomach just before lunch. She crouched in the lining, hearing the avalanche munch of food, then it was carrots, peas, courgettes, potatoes, gravy and meat. Then it was sweet. Then it was stilton, roquefort, weisslacker-käse, gex; it was smoked salmon with scrambled eggs, hot boiled ham, plum flan, frogs' legs. She knew where she was all right, clambered onto the greasy breast of a goose, opened wide, then chomped and chewed and gorged; inside the Fat Woman now, trying to get out.