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
