The Hunger Pains series (Part 3)
the hunger for rest
I cannot breathe because my body cannot fully relax because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. because I cannot breathe. I cannot fully relax my body because I am being monitored. I am being monitored they are monitoring me they are monitoring me I am being monitored and I cannot breathe. I am suffocating because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. I cannot breathe because my body cannot fully relax because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. because I cannot breathe. I cannot fully relax my body because I am being monitored. I am being monitored they are monitoring me they are monitoring me I am being monitored and I cannot breathe. I am suffocating because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. I cannot breathe because my body cannot fully relax because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. because I cannot breathe. I cannot fully relax my body because I am being monitored. I am being monitored they are monitoring me they are monitoring me I am being monitored and I cannot breathe. I am suffocating because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. I cannot breathe because my body cannot fully relax because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. because I cannot breathe. I cannot fully relax my body because I am being monitored. I am being monitored they are monitoring me they are monitoring me I am being monitored and I cannot breathe. I am suffocating because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. I cannot breathe because my body cannot fully relax because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. because I cannot breathe. I cannot fully relax my body because I am being monitored. I am being monitored they are monitoring me they are monitoring me I am being monitored and I cannot breathe. I am suffocating because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. I cannot breathe because my body cannot fully relax because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. because I cannot breathe. I cannot fully relax my body because I am being monitored. I am being monitored they are monitoring me they are monitoring me I am being monitored and I cannot breathe. I am suffocating because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. I cannot breathe because my body cannot fully relax because I am being watched they are watching me they are watching me I am being watched and my body cannot fully relax. because I cannot breathe. I cannot fully relax my body because I am being monitored. I am being monitored they are monitoring me they are monitoring me I am being monitored and I cannot
the hunger for comfort
Pienso el amor frecuentemente. La diferencia entre estar lista y estar dispuesta. Soy lista, verdad. Pero estoy dispuesta? No se. Estoy dispuesto a ponerme en esa situación, realmente? Confío tanto en mí mismo?? Sí, pero alguien más?
Tal vez la última vez realmente fue la última vez…….que triste, no?
I find myself looking for intimacy in relationships outside of my family. Friends, lovers, peers, anyone who could see me outside of my body. See me outside the cage of doubt I spend my home-time in. The comfort is not bred within the walls of my house. Praise is hidden under obligation, these are all things I am supposed to do. It’s like why should I praise you, be proud of you for doing something you’re supposed to do? You’re supposed to be getting good grades, you’re supposed to be taking care of all these things, you’re supposed to be doing this, so why are you even excited about it? Why are you proud of yourself for doing these things when you’re supposed to do them? Those words loom and suddenly I am not proud of myself. For anything. I am undeserving of love, affection, comfort.
My friends tell me I shrink when they’re around. Shrivel, bend in ways they’ve never seen from me. They tell me I love them in big hugs and screaming from the rooftops because I was tired of mirroring the darkness. The bitter bite of obligated sweetness. I know that I own nothing. Everything promised can be snatched away, or never released in the first place. If not that, anything can be thrown back into your face. I’ve been taught and shown for my entire life that anything and everything tangible even intangible can be taken away from you at any given time. Nothing is mine, I own nothing. I was taught to only know guilt when receiving. Guilt so heavy it sinks the asking stone. One day I will die with boulders in my belly, every emotion swallowed in the face of asking for comfort.
If the only things I own are my thoughts, I become protective of them. I found my privacy in the spaces between those thin shapeless walls, in the margins and lines of my journals, in my bedroom. In my trembling fingers, anxiety is the only thing holding me together from the outside but…… these thoughts are mine.
i wasn’t taught the right kind of forgiveness
accepting the passive, the dismissive, the invisible
half formed and half meant
my mother apologizes by making dinner
55 minutes after deeming me both “too smart to” or “morally fucked” the air shifts and the soft voiced “are you hungry” appears
as if some slight reminder of nurturing is enough to serve as apology
oh, but let me human
let me let slip of tongue
and watch me bleed
bite my tongue clean off in submission
atonement
i’d never earn the pass my mother so freely scans at the kiosk apology
waiting to stamp me guilty into unforgiving ground
The Hunger Pains series (part 2)
who is the mirror child?
who is the maker of the nonsensical you-wind?
you won
this game and the next and the next until your prize comes in the mail
tucked inside ornate tissue and lace:
my gore for your viewing pleasure
each sliver of skin you bit and scratched, returned
wrapped around skewer and charred how you like
am I still delicious?
the veins from behind my eyes tossed in alfredo and seasoned,
no longer longing for one more lookpress every guttural scream you’ve ripped from me into the palm of your hand
your torture beget your favoritve sound
your request to love me, forced from my lips
even duress couldn’t satisfy you
there’s nothing left
there’s nothing left
there’s nothing left
there’s nothing left
there’s nothing I know more than a firework heartbeat
I mean
a dog scared by firework heartbeat
I mean
a hummingbird startled by a dog scared by fireworks heartbeat
I mean
another screaming lighting cloud
another birdcage singing the blues and you are the only one who can hear her
I mean me
I mean my echo is your ring tone so even your best friends know what I sound like when I’m dying
when I’m combusting
until there’s nothing left
until there’s nothing left
until there’s nothing left
until there’s nothing left
the hunger for peace
Every conversation I have with my parents feels like a scene in the play called “how to tell your parents that you do not trust them without telling them that exact phrase”. I’ve tried to trust them. It doesn’t work. This is the House of False Promises. The Fabrication chamber where we’re all supposed to pretend that I will receive what I was promised. My family heirloom is a lie. Party trick, how to convince an entire group of people that you are breathing. When you haven’t been. Not for years.
I feel guilty for trying to hold them accountable, just as I was taught. Especially when I had to hold my parents accountable to their promises, their lies, their actions. I really don’t know how to access these feelings anymore. I feel like I’m repeating myself. I feel like I’m repeating myself and bothering people for wanting to talk about my pain. I feel guilty for not wanting to give any more grace to anyone because grace has never been exhibited toward me.
The fight has become internal because they are not listening. Remember me, the invisible girl. I rationalize them, grace pours from my tear ducts and every cut I gave myself. I forgive them before I'm asked, apologize and grovel before I’m in trouble. Accept the punishment for my being weak. For my not living up to expectations. For asking for emotional comfort. When I’m open, as commanded, the things that bring me joy are immediately trivialized. They “don’t matter”, or they are things that I “should already be doing”.
So I learned to love outside my body. Equate the loving of flesh with the loving of hearts. These were the embraces that weren’t qualified. These were the embraces, breath exchanges that I could feel with my entirety, safely. Even when I knew that man, that body, that heat wasn’t mine to love. Or didn’t love me. Their bodies loved me, held me, tried to contain me and watched me overflow. They allowed me space to be, even when they were lying to me.
my hidden secret, my blood
my waist is getting smaller and smaller as your arms wrapped around it
I could almost disappear and love it
almost crack in half at your hand
and know my last breath was asking for it
I have never been more hungry than next to you in that last bed
it’d been weeks since our love’s last feed and the night knew it wasn’t going to be replenished any time soon, but you lied to me anyway
just like old times
The Hunger Pains series (Part 1)
hunger, belly, why are you so bottomless
why are you so so deep
so so empty
so so cavernous like the mouths I had, lost in themselves
hunger, belly, black hole
hunger, belly, where are the rocks?
you know boulders, best
break open the insides
your infectious internal bleeding
hunger, belly, what does your satisfaction taste like?
air-nothing
air-smoke
air-suffocating
my favorite tongue is the one that cannot taste
the one that sits on the fireplace, trophy cut skinned and photographed
hunger, belly, one day I’ll bring you to the oceans
let sand smooth you,
softness hue you
bone deep this time
mud deeper
when are you full
when are you full
when will you eat
when will you eat
the hunger pains
The magic child. A child hiding. A child of imagination. I spent most of my childhood drifting between magic and dreaming. The monsters I saw were my friends, allies, within these dreams and I begged to be one of them. To be hidden and imaginary and just as invisible as I felt in my skin. I heard ghosts, fictional characters, angels, people who were not born yet. I remembered the life I had before this one. And the life three lives before that. In this one I was the starving girl. The invisible girl. The watching girl.
I imagined the house a dripping wet castle most of the time. I was both the dragon that lives in the basement and the princess that was trapped there, hiding from a different type of beast. I was starving. I was crumbling, invisible, stepped on glass that was always breaking. I never knew which hairline crack would shatter me. There were parts of me that longed for it.
I saw the irony of my life. Hyper-monitored, yet almost completely ignored. It was due diligence; my grandparents can say they put me in therapy. What else is there to do? They’d done all they could by paying someone to translate what I was saying, it must be my own fault that I’m still starving. Or suffocating, or whatever manner of death the day named for me.
I found myself hiding everywhere. Because I was dying. My wilted flower heart was full and heavy to the point of sink, so my head remained down when people were looking at. I knew my strengths, my invisibility and hyper-visibility were fleeting in their placements. They took turns, discussed who should see me and when. And I wondered who “they” were. The voices in my head were symptoms of my depression, according to my therapist. My family loved me; they thought I was beautiful, smart, pathetic, weak, irresponsible, better than this, funny, sweet, a burden. I was best when quiet. When I was observant and quiet, I was a delight to be around. I listened, had no questions. Obedience and proprietary deeply ingrained in my veins, it was cellular now. I only knew how to bend and listen and follow while being told that I was a leader.
The first hunger was visibility. Then peace. Then, silence. I saw everything. Heard all of the words not meant for my body because I was so often forgotten. So often lonely, under surveillance, and surrounded.