No Food | Teen Ink

No Food

October 12, 2015
By toni.creations SILVER, Bronx, NY, New York
toni.creations SILVER, Bronx, NY, New York
5 articles 3 photos 0 comments

Daddy says that ravenous beasts don't belong in the small labyrinths of apartment hallways ,
He puts his fingers to drooling lips and tells us  to hush, our growling tummies are too loud and they are interrupting the, music that seeps from the air conditioners and empty refrigerators,
Please Dad, there are insects crawling from the expired canned peas in the cupboards,
Toxic ink is pouring from the kitchen faucet and when it reaches my small intestines the ink hardens, covering them up until I cough up bleeding poetry,
Dad I'm starting to eat according to what's on the menu but the house special is, air bubbles and liquid almosts of what,
I should've said , or done , or eaten but I didn't
Choked on words in the empty classrooms of my mind where the silence echoes because I don't know the f***ing answer to the equation of survival
and I ram my two wrinkled fingers down the art room and the auditorium
Regurgitating art that I've chewed up, but it was too much to keep in,
Dad, it seems like starvation has been a repetitive antidote, but didn't you know that after
taking the same medicine for many years your antigens use natural selection to become immune and kill
habits,
so after a year I let my cheeks get pinchable, and the bones didn't show in my stomach,
but then you reintroduced me when the fridge had a lock on it, when the emptiness inside of me resembled a cold rectangular prism that regulated my metabolism,
I am a victim but I am also a murderer, that stuffs in my throat the papers ripped from magazines and then expects myself to be full
I'm insane,
the way I let paper planes break away from my esophagus and pierce the
mirror,
And Dad, when you say that we've eaten too much for you to keep up,
just know that it took every ounce of courage for me to take my last bite
Dad,
I don't know if my starving soul is in my hands
or yours
or the common eye that knows beauty when it sees it


The author's comments:

This piece is dedicated to anyone that has dealt with not having enough food in the kitchen, or anyone that forced themselves to stop eating.


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