She Was

• Llainey Murphy
• Poetry
• 2018

She was fourteen, looking in the mirror, contemplating if she looked fat.
She was fifteen, doing hundreds of crunches on her bedroom floor, the door closed, her lips laced with vomit.
She was sixteen, being told that her body looked "pretty."
She was seventeen, drowning herself in tears as she sat in a hot bath, desperately trying to stay warm.
She was eighteen, shopping in the children's clothing section, the glares burning holes into her soul.
She was nineteen, being told she "wasn't pretty anymore."
She was twenty, being force-fed by a machine, she was slowly dying.

She didn't create the perfect body; she created the perfect monster.