Listen to this spoken work piece.
Nighttime, I feel it stir;
a hunger, a prayer,
a ghost-song in my bones.
My body reaches for sugar
in auto-pilot.
“Let it in,” Crave taunts;
murmurs from the walls.
I scroll in the dark.
Bargain with myself.
Just a little. Just tonight.
The phone hits the table.
No.
This craving isn’t mine.
It was coded into me
by hands that never loved me;
programmers of pain who said
this was the only way
to quiet the ache.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I stand up.
Tonight, I am warrior.
I face the hunger, not with rage;
but with a sigh of love.
I see the child in me,
curled in shadow,
cookie in hand,
hiding in corners,
not wanting to share
because no one ever shared with her;
afraid to be caught
with someone else’s secret.
A mother with hoarded snacks
and starved eyes taught me lack.
Taught me shame.
Taught me to swallow before I’m seen.
Taught me I’d become her.
Old. Fat. Unwanted.
But I see through it now.
Through the solo dinners and hidden wrappers.
Through the famine beneath her hollow eyes.
I ask my trembling self:
Can I heal this?
Can I really undo what was encrypted
at the bottom of my nervous system?
I turn to face the Crave.
I tell myself,
“Be brave.”
I open the fridge.
Reach for juice;
pure, vibrant, clean.
A reminder:
We are free now.
We get to choose.
There’s no battle here anymore.
I cradle Crave,
pull it into my arms.
I do not fight it.
I soothe it.
I sing to the child behind it,
Let’s walk together into the light.
Let’s melt into something soft.
Let the sun dissolve you
into my skin.
Let love swell so wide
it tears down the fences
you were caged inside.
Here I am.
Here we are.
Me. The wound. The mirror.
The past flickering behind deleted apps
that once submitted to you.
And you, Crave,
You are the last of it.
The final sugar I ever consume.
You now become part of me,
absorbed, transformed.
You are no longer separate.
You dissolve.
You end.
You were never real.
Just a phantom I kept feeding.
Now, you are Stardust.
And I,
I am the Queen of Me.
And we are no longer at war.
Vennie Kocsis © 1994-present by Vennie Kocsis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
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