When I brought you into the world,

did I ask for you to become a living skeleton?

Did I ask for your arms to be shriveled as stalks of grass wavering in a drought,

for your skin to press against the bars of your rib cage like an animal trying to get in,

for your collarbone to create a hollow deep enough to catch the rain?

No.

But I knew.

I knew that no matter what I did,

no matter how much I held you or scolded you or loved you with my own malnourished heart,

your eyes would be dull as the sockets in your skull,

your stomach would burn you from the inside out,

and your bones would creak and shatter

beneath your meager weight. I knew

that you would have lips that searched for the taste of food,

that your hands would be dirty and brittle as sticks,

that nothing I could do would save you

from the feeling of your belly caving in on itself.

You are a creature, a wild beast of my own flesh,

a ravenous wolf who clings to your own bones, you will know

the feeling of hunger eating away at you from the inside, you will know

the faint and forgotten burn for knowledge that you will never have, you will be

the creature on the inside and the outside of your skin, you will eat yourself up, your stomach will swallow you up from the inside out, oh my child

You will lose yourself in the ache for food. You will burn

you will drown in your own hunger, your desires of the flesh and bone, but never will you know

what it means to love the life you are living on, you will never wonder

at the nature of the stars, you will not be allowed.

No, you must sit here and listen to the roaring of the world, to the pleading of your body

for that first and last thing you cannot have, you will listen to your innards

ticking down the days, and there is nothing I can do, my child, I’ve already told you

There is nothing I can do.