45 years old, a newly single mother.
The buoyancy in her skin depletes as her hair grows grey and thins with time, aged with distress.
She looks in the mirror and every week seems to feel extra weight digging into her heels. The pressure overflowed from her shoulders onto her chest.
She complains of gaining 20 pounds. Rage, disgust, defeat, and betrayal push down her spine.
In 52 weeks, life took a turn, leaving her on her head trying to release the pressure of blood rushing to her head, like a bullet to the skull. Any attempt of relief simply left her out to dry.
Her skin fades, becoming more pale with every passing moment. She grows dim in the rays of torture.
Cold and dry to the touch. She wilts in the plummeting temperatures.
Clouds of gloom hang over her head. Fatigue permeates every ounce of her body. Aching, drained of life, overcome with exhaustion.
Day by day, fog spreads across the brain until moments are lost. Her memory escapes herself.
Her voice drops to her heels where all the weight falls. Chin on the floor leaving her mouth ajar. Her dying desire and discontent lives in confinement.
The burden of death catches her tongue, slowing her speech. Her strongest muscle defeated by the sickness gnawing from within.
She sits constipated with no urge of release. Her stomach is tied in knots, cutting off regulation.
The doctor lays his cold hands on her skin to take her vital signs. These signs are meant to mark need and progress in development and discovery, yet she falls on deaf ears and impaired eyes.
All the essential measurements of temperature and rates come back normal. Her symptoms speak to how she experiences illness, yet the signs assign the lies of a textbook onto her being.
Linger eyes from across the room see the doctor jot down, “mod obes.” She sits slouched, bewildered at the fact that the rolls spanning down her body and the lump protruding in her neck could be minimized to 8 characters.
Intolerant to the cold, each petal decays. Each limb burned by the bitter reality of her diagnosis, her body is seized by her condition.
She opens her mouth to inquire about her state of health. Her voice extinguishes in the vast emptiness that encompasses her.
Before he leaves, he checks a couple more things. He notes that her gland is impalpable. She’s guarded, and will never let anyone infiltrate her body again.
He tests her reactions to different stimuli. Again, he scribbles on a paper noting the patient's reflexes are delayed.
He exits the room and upon his return hands her a sheet of paper that details her diagnosis and offers a few words to accompany it. She is too weak to respond.
