I'll write to starve
She said.

I'll eat words,
Develop a bulemic
Mentality,
Purging the words
To the page in
Nauseating bursts.

I'll force it
When I have to.
I'll write when
The hunger pangs
Themselves,
Start to eat me.

I'll sum up calories through
Raucous poetry.
I'll grow weak
As my pen grows strong.

I'll write even when
My hand shakes
Because there's not
Enough sustenance.

I'll deny my body,
And cultivate my mind
With measured abundance.
I'll shrivel up and
Waste away.
But the words will stay
On the paper.

You'll see and say,
How can a skeleton write?

I'll grip the pen
With bony fingers
And I'll show you.
I'll feed you too.

That's what he told me
years ago,
when the hills first
started to sprout
in my head,
beneath the sandcastles,
and under built fairy huts,
when I knew the world was round,
but thought it felt like
a marble in my palm.

He told me,
while I wrote a poem about
a plant,
and then one about dirt,
because I thought
all the growing things were beautiful.

He told me,
after my multiplication
worksheet came back,
bearing 100%
and I couldn't have been
any more proud.

He told me,
after he showed me how to tie shoes
without bunny ears.

And I believed him.

The hills grew into mountains
I promised to move.
But the fairies left the hut when
I left that house.
And the world was round,
but it looked awful flat.
The marble grew heavy, and
got too **** big to hold.

My poems changed,
I'd **** the plant, and the dirt
was only *****.
I thought sad was starting to
Look beautiful.
Math got hard, and I
always wanted new shoes.

Nothing grandpa said
made sense anymore
and his dementia-soaked brain
went too crazy for my company.

Still the mountains in my head grew,
but it was starting to be too late;
they were growing around me,
and I couldn't move myself,
let alone the mountains.