Dotti

You can always tell from the face.

I mean, she’s a fucking skeleton

anyway, but if you’re not sure,

you’ll know if their face looks like those scary

AI masks stretched over metal.

And that’s what she looks like.

She’s with her mum (diagnosed 

anorexic girls often are) and she’s holding a paper Dotti

bag in front of her. For some reason, probably

her size and what I knew That Means for her

mental state, it looks like she’s only fucking

navigating the city through her mum. Always 

mum. And the white paper bag with its black ribbons - 

I wonder what she’s bought.

There are as many types of anorexics as there are 

types of people, but some types have a higher anorexic

density, if that makes sense. And she belongs, it 

looks like, to the mousy-girl type, where clothes don’t hang

off your bones in an edgy way, just a little-girl way,

 and I knew that even if she had bought something really cool

(that her mother had encouraged her to try on, no doubt, 

especially if it was expensive) it wouldn’t work. Like, okay, take

for example a blue and green check Stüssy skirt 

from General Pants - hella cute,

short and straight-cut; I can imagine a Cool Gal

wearing it with an untucked orange shirt (somehow

making it work) and high-top converse and wearing that

to breakfast out with her friends, (she’d eat 

something effortless like a bacon and egg roll) and then 

going to work at another hip cafe where she’s just got to 

throw on her apron and top knot her hair and dart around tables effortlessly…

(I didn’t just imagine this, I saw her n Kingston the other day.)

Take that skirt. This girl here in front of me could have bought

it, but she would have worn something wrong like those

brown sandals with it because those are the shoes she wears

everyday, and anyway, her legs would have just stuck out

skinnily, not healthy-skinnily with its endearing 

slightest bit of convex on the thighs, like that cafe girl.

That convex. 

It disgusts her.

Legs like the edges of

The paper bag,

Hers,

And I know

I know she’s looking at mine

(We’re the same age,

I know it),

And disgusted by my

Disgusting fucking 

Convex thighs that I

Dare to show through

Too-short denim shorts.

Sad little bitch with sad

Googly eyeballs gawking

Smirking

(Queen of nothing, 

Princess Bare),

I won’t fit whatever

The fuck’s in her bag.

I imagine the tiny garment, neatly folded

into a soft little square maybe no bigger than a hand, 

sliding back and forth in the big boxy bag with her

skinny footfalls. When I was younger

in class I used to imagine myself shrunk, tiny enough to fit

into the school bag that would be my house, and it would be 

dark and warm and zipped up away from the light

bright air that I am now, at this moment, walking in.

I wonder what her mum thinks about having a polly pocket for a daughter.

I know she’ll get on the bus with her mum (always mum)

and get home and nibble on a banana, upon instruction, and 

it’ll take her about half an hour to eat.

And my bananas

now fucking blended,

huge smoothies I guzzle cram-

eyed looking at shiny

mannequin clothes.

I narrow it down to four items (oh, don’t you

fucking judge. Don’t you fucking dare). The store’s

full of mediocrity, as most stores are, where everything 

will do, but nothing’s amazing. Then again, I suppose many

girls are fine with that. (Or are they? Do they think 

their clothes are special?) White eyelet tops, brown

skirts, gold-chained handbags; you know, you’ve been. But

her: I hold the first in my hand, gripped its slippy fabric. 

The wrap dress, an anorexic summer staple. Pull it round

tight as you like; the v-neck shows off your sternum. But

brown - too edgy a colour for her; too boring for her

to realise it’s less boring than baby-pink.
Next. Navy

blue shiny pleated

midi skirt. The sort

that skinny little

princess anorexics wear,

hobbled ankles peeking 

out below.

Would her mother like it though? Oh, 

the waist. I pinch the ends of the elastic and 

wrap it around mine. The smallest size nearly

fits me. Impossible, then. 

She would have 

been wistful,

but it would have 

been bittersweet. 

Denim blue mid-calf jumpsuit, thick shoulder straps. She’d know

girls would envy her lack of that piece of babyish

fat connecting her arm and chest. Oh, but the gape of her

gauged armpit like an elderly toothless mouth….

And it’d go with those brown sandals of hers, and

she’d feel misguidedly fashionable.

Checked green and white spaghetti-strap babydoll

dress - the thing about being smaller than the smallest size

is that you just look like its hanger. This dress would keep its cut

on her; loosely cylindrical till the ribs (quietly, triumphantly

prominent underneath) then ever-so-slightly A-lined. Pleasant.

But: breasts. The unfilled cut. It’d make her uncomfortable,

squirmy: lacking or not. So no. Jumpsuit then.

I check the price, smirk. Her mother’s worried about her - 

I wonder why.

I look for my

(disgusting) size,

close the heavy curtain

(same colour).

I blink 

in the mirror, take it off, change back, eyes shut.