full of bones

[TEXT ID] My mother cannot hold a thing without hurting it so she does not hold me anymore. I told her once, this hurts. you're hurting me, and then she let go. [END ID]

[TEXT ID] maybe it was easier to love me when i was still hurt. maybe the healing made me meaner, shattered me into something unkind. a dog that bites. they don't tell you what to do when you come back worse. [END ID]

[TEXT ID: the wind blows harder from up on the roof. if i lay back and stare at the sky long enough, i can forget  the sandpaper feel of tiles and the weight of my bones sinking down and all i will feel is the buoyant glow of sunlight. i used to dream that i had wings massive and feathered and dappled golden brown they'd hang from my shoulder blades like a curtain spread wider than my fingertips i'd wake up midair and plummet down into my sheets feeling too light, too grounded. i understand, i think, why Icarus fell. the wind rises, and the sun is warm i step off, over the edge if i close my eyes, i am swallowed by the ocean.]

[TEXT ID: do you understand how large this sickness in me is? i am standing over the stove, dinner half-made and a maw of knives in my stomach, and still i wonder if i really need to eat. how do you describe it to someone? it's not about my body, it's not about the shape of me, it's not about my skin, so warm and fragile under my hands. it's not even about deserving, or maybe it becomes so, in the fact that i do not have to think about it. in the way that it is instinct. and it must be sickness, to bargain with yourself against the roil in your gut on the exact ratios required to breathe and walk and think. it must be sickness, or it wouldn't come dragging all this shame with it. all this anger. and i'll let it slip sometimes, that i eat maybe a few mouthfuls each day and i'll feel some terrible sliver of delight at the concern in their features. some obsidian-sharp pleasure that, yes, they noticed. even as i watch their eyes for anything dangerous, anything in the name of my best interests because it's handled. i have it under control, i'm not a child. and maybe that's the source of the shame. i want so desperately for someone to look at me and say “oh, darling. oh, sweetheart, i'm so sorry” that sometimes, i worry i collected everything wrong with me on purpose. i used to take a knife and carve little pieces out of myself. like maybe i could find some secret thread and the whole of me would come crumbling apart. the thought of it now makes me sick. but maybe i'm still doing it anyway, just quieter and slower. i lie in bed and wonder if someday i'll just eat myself from the inside out. if by then, my body will be so used to hunger that it will wrap my teeth around the world and still not know how to be satisfied. i wonder if, even then, i'll be able to explain it.]

[TEXT ID] i don’t know who’s to blame. my mother was there, but her hands never learned how to hold me in a way that didn’t hurt. was it her fault i did it alone, or mine for never reaching for her? some days it's like the walls are stuffed with corpses and the air is screaming with rot, but i can’t show you or they all come back to life. they were dead just a moment ago, i promise. i know they’re breathing now but i can still smell it on my skin. i can feel the knife, but does it count if i can’t name its shape? [END ID]