No Breakfast at Tiffany's

Sipping a flavoured water

Not far from Tiffany's

Watching her father-in-law's

Full fat latte

Creating a moustache

On his five o' clock shadow

Even though it was 4pm

She straightened her back
Her somewhat Hepburn hairdo

A half redheaded beehive

Making her appear taller
Black jeans to look slim
White chemise top

With black spots

A la Audrey Hepburn

Playing Capote's Holly

A starring role

In her own life

Fictional characters

But with real food

Cakes all round

But a morsel doesn't touch her lips

She hugs her flavoured water in her hands
Her hollow cheeks and upright carriage

Elongating her face and body
They chat about exercise
Her skinny jeans just aren't skinny enough
There is not enough room

Between her and their skin-tight

Contours that make them more

Like pants or slacks

So she twists the body

To show it to its advantage

Be careful of foreshortening

Use distraction techniques

Two bracelets on her right hand
Almost take the attention away

From her bony wrists

If the pearls did not remind us

Of a carcass picked clean

And bones shiny with wear
She constantly fidgets

Wishing she could be burning calories

And calms herself
And pulls her top down to settle

Does it riding up mean

She is putting on weight?

She distracts herself
Applies lip balm

Careful not to have to

Include it in

Her calorie count.
At least its flavoured water now
She thinks of her progress

It used be plain
In-laws were watchful
She'd have to be

On best behaviour
And secretly purge

Her wicked ways

Careful not to

Mess up her

Pretty, patent pumps

With bows

Like the one she wore

On the black round neck

Slightly off centre to the left
Her left
Even that weighed on her

Made her feel off-balance

Lacking in symmetry

And she knew stress

Could cause water retention

And water retention stress
And then the whirl pool

Spiral

Never ending
Down fall
Into collapsing

Under her own weight
The weight of the world on her
Worries weighing heavily
Weighty issues
Everything was too big
And too much
And controlling excesses
Became a minute by minute
By milligram by milligram
By millimetre by millimetre agenda
And they all know the day

Will come

For an intervention
She drops

The empty bottle

On the table
In case they haven't noticed

She has finished

The whole bottle
Not kept any for later
Or pretended to drink
As they said she usually did
She twists the ring on her finger

Her wedding ring
That will fall off one day
When her fingers

Are small enough
And she leans back

Against her fawn coat
Just like Hepburn's
Darling
To keep a hungry girl warm
And Holly goes lightly
With no breakfast at Tiffany's
Just animated

Conversation to
Distract

From the elephant in the room
Half sitting on her coat

For comfort
Her buttocks have no fat

To cushion against

A hard wooden red seat
The colour is immaterial
Although she finds

Wearing certain colours fattening

Nothing flattering

She puts it off

Long enough

And finally

Goes to the toilet
Hoping she hasn't let it go too long
She has her tissues in case

And always a sugar-free breath mint

She is gone.

They wait

Knowing

Hoping not

She comes back

There's too long a queue
She will just have to work it off

They go to leave

She picks up her bag

A golden hold-all

She keeps her life in

When it runs out

With gold accessories and bows

So she can look at something bright

When she lies on the bathroom floor.
And maybe when she faints

People won't just walk on by

Because she is so slight
And as she walks

Large and shiny accessories

Distract and make her look small

In relation

To their bright golden presence
A model size zero
A terrible beauty
Will implode

Like an atom bomb

Or a star
Will reach

Its chandrasekhar limit
Collapse upon itself

Becoming a black hole
And a glimmer of the past
A twinkling that was

And there will be

No breakfast at Tiffany's

However much

The diamonds

In the windows

Reflect her fading light.

Capote, T. (1958) Breakfast At Tiffany's, Random House