Ribbons
She stared at her naked form in the tall mirror that hung on the wall of her room. Her eyes traced every hateful curve she possessed, not that she had many. She was as thin as a
stick, and she liked it. Starving herself was worth it, she thought as she surveyed herself. It made her less of a woman. She was so thin; her period had stopped as well. She liked
that, too. She would do anything to shed her woman's body. Her milk-white skin was crisscrossed with scars that stood out in blinding streaks of pink. What she wouldn't give
to get rid of that body. Her hair was thin after years of illness, but shiny and a lovely shade of raven black, but she despised it as well. It was her mother's hair. She knelt and
picked up the blood-red ribbon that lay on the floor beside her and began to wind it around her meager excuse for a chest. She had no idea who had given it to her; she had
found it lying outside her door when she was a teenager. She pulled it tighter and tighter, smiling at the pain. Any mere physical pain was a welcome relief from the emotional
torment that strangled her night and day. Besides, she thought. I deserve it.