Held Hostage by Starvation

By Shaakira Ally

I'm tired of starving!

I don’t mean the kind you cure with bread.

Not the wail of an abandoned new-born, waiting for milk it will never taste.

Not the hollow ache of an empty plate.

Not the sickness craved by shrinking anorexic bodies,

Or the silence bought by needles and brand names:

Mounjaro and Ozempic,

Little miracles for someone else’s pain.

No!

This is the hunger that eats away what’s left of your soul.

The kind no prayer can fill.

The kind that laughs at answered wishes,

And sits beside you in your blessings,

Gnawing.

It feels like drowning

In a puddle,

Suffocating in still air.

One that makes you wake up screaming,

Because sleep is the only escape—

And even that betrays you.

It’s staring at a future

You’re not sure you want to arrive in.

It’s the guilt of not loving what others would die for.

It’s yearning for judgement day to arrive soon

So that you don’t have to be ridiculed by others who are feasting-

While you’re involuntary fasting!

It’s the deep loneliness you’ve made a roommate,

And now, when an actual visitor knocks,

You gag at the intrusion.

Your loneliness has never left you

So why should you be disloyal to it right?

It’s the ache of being addicted

To your own misery,

Needing it like breath—

Even as it razors away at your lungs.

No, this hunger won’t kill me.

It’ll keep me alive

Just long enough to feel all of the hunger pangs

That I wish I didn’t have to feel!

Not even giving me scraps of left over’s

Slow starvation

Slowly starving me to death!

By Shaakira Ally