Photo by Raissa Lara Lütolf (-Fasel) on Unsplash

CW: Starvation, neglect, physical abuse

Like wrung out

Like starving

Like running

Like chasing

Like winning this fight

At the cost of my own free thinking


At the cost of my own lines in the sand

Of my own safety inside


I spent all summer asking

What would it have been like

If someone had fed me?


And I still don’t know

I have no idea


Because in order to have been

Someone people fed freely

The world would have to be

A place with food abundance

Rather than food scarcity


Do I feed people because I have empathy?

Or because I have terror?


Of the crater it carves from you

Of the sleepless, painful nights

Of the way humanity slips off the body

And you don’t even notice when it’s gone too


Mind a hole

Stomach a hole

Heart an empty bottle

Brain a scratching, skittering thing

Animal body, scavenging, searching


If they beat you for eating their food

The beating itself becomes proof

That in the prison of my own starvation

I still did what it took to survive.