swollen cheeks.

So when they’ve all gone and she’s alone again, she creeps in and silently cracks open the door, avoiding making a sound, as to erase any trace of her ever being here. The light from the cold dank cupboard floods into her eyes and lights up her filthy face, her eyes dart furtively over the hoards of grime she smears and soils her insides with, all the while licking her chapped, dry lips reaching out and grabbing and clutching, quickly, again and again. Then she’s gone, quick as a dart, back into her hutch, the little prison, locking the door.
There’s paper and plastic all over the floor, crumbs and stains surround the patch she squats over and her hand shovels and grabs and picks frantically. There’s a noise outside… a sound, she squeals and throws it all under the bed and freezes “Are you in there? Where is she, l heard her come in?” Then they’re gone again and she’s alone again and she’s ashamed again. So she rams in more, more, more into the void, filling that little last bit of emptiness that scares her so. Slowly its filling up and she’s disappearing. Where she is hollow there’s too much now, she‘s doubled over, stretched, sore. Now she’s now becoming just like any another, an easy victim of over-indulgence, punishing and punished for the not knowing or understanding, the just desserts for the want and need that never goes away, weakness. Just before its washed all away she looks out of the window. It’s sunny and theres a family down there, eating. One of them is a baby, one of them is a little girl in a swimsuit with a floppy sun hat and they are smiling like everything’s ok. That’s hard to look at. It’s like looking straight into the sun to see the bright beautiful light, only knowing it will only leave you blinder than before. But she makes herself watch how they are happy and it makes her gut boil and rot until water leaks down her face. When it’s time she ducks down and pours water back into it, lots and lots, gushes and gushes, then there’s spitting, gurgling, coughing, retching and real fear until its gone and now its still. The water around her bubbles with thick, churned decay. It smells like her and she runs it through her fingers over her skin, rubbing it back into where it spilt out of before and so its silent and she is left staring blankly, confused. It’s grotesque and now it's hers, so she lies in it, its what she does make and before it leaves she smells its, daubs it on the wall and swills it over her thighs. The putrid stench creeps under the door down the stairs, out of her insides and into her little world, polluting everywhere she will go now. The mirror mocks her angry, pocked, swollen cheeks, yellowing teeth, sore black eyes. She knows there’s nothing there now.
After, she pads lightly back down, scaling barefoot along the hall to place herself in front of this box in the safe room, it’s full of flickering pictures and familiar sound. The girls flick their hair and dance along with pale plumps skin, ruby red lips and long hair and she’s pulls at the dry tufts falling into her eyes and hates some more until the next time, then when theres no one else around so she can reach all of this back from within the emptiness of inside.