Hourglass

by Eve Makoff


The hours flip by on the mud-brown digital clock on my dresser.
Fluorescent red. 
1:21. 2:34. 3:18. 4:25. 
I am awake because I am counting. 
My waist is a 27 but should be 24.
An hourglass. 
36-24-36.


Toes dug into the sand, face-down on my towel, whispering under my armpit. 
“I’m so fucking fat.”
I’m 13 years old and I ate 5 brownies.
I should always weigh 125 pounds. 


Peanut butter. 
188 calories in 2 tablespoons. 
16 grams of fat. 
Thickly spread on soft white bread in the cafeteria at the camp under the redwoods. 
No peanut butter for 20 years.


Grade point average 
SAT/AP scores
Class ranking 
Tennis games 
Extracurriculars
Friends Suitors Colleges


3000 miles away.
The freezing air whips my face on 116th Street and Broadway.
40 degrees and I’m barefoot. 
On my stoop an old man says I had Michelangelo toes.
In 1984 the drinking age in New York is 19.


Married at 32 
9 pounds 11 ounces
8 pounds 7 ounces
8 pounds 15 ounces
Divorced at 42
Married at 49


Carbs Laps Miles 
Degrees Jobs Salaries


[Belly laughs-Soulmates
Awe-Transcendence-Grief
Poems-Music
Words
Silence]


Time
How much do I have left?
X


* * * * *

Eve Makoff is an internal medicine and palliative care physician. She is studying narrative medicine at Columbia University and reads and writes in her spare time.