5 kilos.

 She weighed her love in kilograms. The ones she lost or gained depending on how much love she had to beg outside. She was hiding in the crags of her many times broken little heart, looking at the numbers on the scale, and waiting patiently for her new adventure.

She unconsciously punished herself by fasting. She would hear her intestines roaring, and she would repeat to herself: guilt, guilt, guilt, chaining the syllables and turning it into a prayer. She was convinced that in the lightness of her flesh, in making her fragility visible to everyone, she would find a way to fly away from that dark sensation that was latching onto her throat. She remembered that the lust that was consuming her every day never touched his body; she just gave him a glimpse of it, and that was enough to scare him for life. She told herself over and over again that her body was not deserving of the warmth and that she would never be touched with the passion she expected. She saw herself in front of the mirror trying on her entire wardrobe once again, being sure that she once felt better among those fabrics and that she once loved the fit of those jeans on her ass. In another life, she told herself. And she murmured again—the guilt.

Life was a dark, endless staircase that twisted and went up, but it took her nowhere. Angry as she was with her useless and cursed body, she would spend the mornings counting her moles and denying herself breakfast. Then she would cry and convince herself that her tears would become rain in a few weeks. She would smile after that thought and allow herself a piece of bread, an apple, or a glass of juice.

That is how she became, finally, in control of her body. It was an alchemy trick: she would believe that every day she starved herself, she was also killing the fragile love that lived in her body. Her love had no owner; she couldn’t tell if it was hers or someone else’s, but she felt it didn’t belong to her if there was no one there to look.

She had to get rid of that love now that the performance was over and the audience, the lonely man who had gotten bored of throwing crumbs at her from the atrium, had left after she shouted him out. She didn't know what to do with it, with that ownerless love that was now occupying a huge space in her house, in her thoughts, between sighs while trying to sleep. The emptiness was horrible, and she needed to transmute it into her body, condense it all in her stomach, and never chew again.

But there was something else. There was bliss in the idea of starving herself to death. Something primitive forced her to sharpen her claws, lick her lips, and feel like a predator. She would remind herself how humankind hunted hungry, lived hungry, and slept hungry until they found what they were looking for. There was purpose in hunger; it was a blessing, the confirmation of being on the right path. She connected the rage, the anger, and the survival instinct, and she felt stronger than she ever felt before. She looked at the scale. 5 kilos down. It was time to hunt again.