As Thin As Goodbye

• Jasmine Shirrefs, Grade 12, Ballarat Grammar School
• Poetry
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

She stares in the mirror and something different
stares back. She flicks eagerly through the pages
gawking at the near non-existent silhouettes
of the fashion models, the runway queens.
She laces up her shoes and runs. Her thighs
pounding as they continually hit the hard ground.
Gravity to calls her. She stares in the mirror;
she doesn’t like anything she sees. She enjoys noticing her
faults. She plans her meals for tomorrow, not a kilojoule
over. Maybe he will like me if I push myself,
harder, harder, thinner, thinner, goodbye.
She watches the thin girls on the screen; she longs
to be the protagonist of her own life. She compares
her body to every person she passes. She doesn’t know
of her value as a non-physical being.
She bathes in sadness and vanity, her mind cries ‘help me’.