The Water Skeletons

They show up at dawn and never notice anyone else. That would take energy away from their mission. They swim like fiends. When they are finished they stand on deck and slowly towel off, deliberately displaying their emaciated bodies. Some of us glance and gasp at their hollow thighs, broomstick arms, caved in cheeks and knobby elbows. These two women share a lane and share their militant approach to compulsive exercise and calorie restriction. The water skeletons. The sisters of Auschwitz. They both drive huge expensive cars, tanks to protect their stick-figure-bodies. They're fighting a war distorted in mirrors, in affluent suburbia, that is ultimately between their ears.