I cannot help but remember
that things got awfully sad,
the day you began sleeping
around the clock.

I was never one for time
but then again, I found
myself sitting alone
in the yellow kitchen,
wondering if you would
find the courage to climb out of bed.

Once it was midnight,
I salivated and began
to dream of railroads
and the places they could take me
if only I could stop counting
and forget the way
you left
the stove, barren.

That was the first time
I knew hunger intimately
and then for years,
I would taste forgiveness,
chewing it over and over
until I finally could take
no more, throwing it up,
in the hope that I would
find answers in my emptiness.

But the clarity never came
in that way and I stopped
looking to others to make me whole.
I ran and ran so far
that I forgot about to think
about you and your weight
yet I know it slept in my spine:
the Pavlovian response
of procuring the void
I so desperately wished to comprehend.

My body took me
to the places I dreamt of
that night when I was a
ravenous girl,
You always told me I was beautiful
but I felt maybe
that I was too much.
I tried to shrink down so that
only my mind remained
but I’m two parts mad,
so at least I know I’m made
of something.