In all disorder, a secret order.

Maybe it's the sheer amount of numbers that has you thinking about it.

You think about things you shouldn't be thinking about anymore. Like the metal held between your fingers. It's so heavy, even without any additions. You don't think you could bear the weight of it a second longer or the taste of metal in your mouth.

You get a tired look in response to your fiddling and you think for a moment, why bother with the instrument. How many numbers did they fit inside your blood?

*

You go through days of bitter cold and hazy recollections. Days meld. You wake up with numbers in your head and the weight in your chest and the cold adds to the mass. It's always long hours which could be added and subtracted. Add a blanket and another and another. Layering yourself with more clothes, when the ice in your veins seems too blue, the skin above it too thin to shield you.

And the weight and the numbers swirl inside your head, until it aches and you have no where to go and no way to make it stop. You can't keep out the cold and you can't block out the numbers, but the sharpness of hipbones and the reassuring presence of your rib cage are comforts. Their weight is measurable and true.

*

You were at first just a glutton. You would buy food, resting it between your palms, feeling the weight of it. The smell, the taste only imagined, but the weight of it was too heavy. It became too daunting, so you threw it away before it had the chance to get stuck inside your head.  There isn't enough room for that weight and you know, there isn't enough sanity left to add it up.

You baked cupcakes. Adding each ingredient carefully and only after it was weighed. You waited patiently, but fiddled with the boxes on the counter. Then they were done and you decorated them, lined them up and then put them on plates at the vacant table. It wasn't long before they were crushed, thrown out windows, into garbage bags or even ripped apart into something that just would not go down the drain. The bulk of it was only a stopper which blocked it up.

But sometimes you didn't seek to destroy, you just left them. Waiting until they were disgusting, untouchable and completely unrecognisable. You imagined them broken down, adding to the weight and the numbers, until you felt you couldn't breathe. They were gone the next time you looked.

*

When you went so long without any food, it made you ache and plead, but the numbers went away.

"Why don't you eat?" That wouldn't have been asked years ago.

You thought about it for a while and you thought about the numbers.

"It's an addiction," you said, "it turns into something you do over and over again, until you have to keep having it, because if you don't you could lose it all."

But you had already lost it all, apart from your constant companions.

*

You used to love sweets. Sweets and chocolate and whatever Nan made you. Whenever you went to her house, there would be choices and more choices, weight and more numbers, but they had never bothered you then. No one ever bothered you then. The numbers just slid down your throat without resistance and you barely recognised the heaviness that settled inside. Now the thought of it is terrifying. How can people carry so much? It's almost enough to drown you now.

You didn't go and see Nan much anymore, nor did you spend your time picking up sweets.

You knew at some point, you had to have eaten before. That this weight was not always present. You can't remember it clearly though. Somewhere along the line you lost whatever it was that anchored you down and kept the heaviness at bay.

Now it was just too much.

*

"You have to get up, you can't just stay in bed."

"But it's so cold out there. Why can't I just stay here?" The buzzing in your head and the pain in your stomach made the thought of leaving unbearable.

Even as she sat at the end of your bed and just stared, it did little to comfort you from the overwhelming cold and the shivers that could only be kept inside and not shared.

"Why do I ever have to get up at all?" Everything was just numbers and cold and pain. Coming and going never changed that. There was no distraction to push that away.

"You know why."

You closed your eyes. The dotted lights amongst the black underneath were comforting. You wish you didn't know why.

*

Some days everything was okay again.

You looked in the mirror, you dressed yourself up, but with no intention to go out. The sharp angles that had replaced the softness, with your ribs and your hipbones proudly on display. You still had that fat that reminded you of the presence of numbers and of those people with less numbers. There was always someone with less. Some days when you went out you looked at those people and wondered how they managed that. How did they ignore the heaviness of the metal in their hands? Why were they so blessed? At least they gave you something to strive towards.

And when the first feelings of fullness hit you, it was a buzzing in your head and a quickened beat of your heart that reminded you, you hadn't died. But everything was too fast and suddenly your make up was no longer so bright or attractive.

How many calories does your blood have? The metal in your hands much lighter than anything that was hidden in the kitchen. When you spent the night lying on the floor you thought of the loss of calories down your leg and started recounting your numbers.

*

You sat on the bus and thought about metal and about weight. The heavy metal in your mouth and the cold glass against your cheek. Your skin was frozen and marred with blue which clearly ran up your arms. You imagined scrubbing the blue away, over and over, until it came off. It never did come off but the added red was so warm and you were so cold.

*

"It's going to be okay." You spoke to yourself, long after everyone had left or cared anymore.

You listened to your own breathing, you could feel the frost settle in your chest once more. You waited to hear any sounds or breathing from the other rooms. There was no sound. There was no response. There was only the insomniac's ritual of counting over and over, including those little, white pills by your side. You counted 22.

Not long later there would be hospital beds, made up of stark white sheets, that did little to bring you warmth. The blue had to stay and the red locked away, feeling ever more heavy without any release.  There were lights that were too bright and voices that seemed too far away. While you knew it had something to do with you, the cold drip in your arm reminded you that it would never be so easy to live with the numbers again.

You stayed on the floor some days later. You thought of numbers and the metallic taste in your mouth and wondered if you would ever find out how many numbers they poisoned you with. But for now you were content with the red and the weight in your hands had never been so light before.