Full

I cannot eat

For I am full of my loneliness.

It sits behind my ribs,

An uninvited heirloom,

Heavy as cast iron.

It tells me I must be everything at once—

Soft and unbreakable,

Desirable and untouched,

Mother and muse and machine.

And I try.

I dress myself in competence.

I perfume myself with patience.

I hold the world together with hairpins

And a calendar.

Still, the quiet comes.

It comes when the door clicks shut.

When the makeup dissolves.

When my reflection stops performing

And just stands there,

A woman with galaxies in her mouth

And no one asking her to speak.

They say we are nurturers.

They forget we are also storms,

And weather shapes continents.

There is an ache in being seen

Only in fragments.

A shoulder.

A smile.

A waist.

A pulse.

A pussy.

A womb.

Never the whole cathedral.

I want to be vast without apology.

I want to be complicated

Without being called difficult.

I want to hunger

For my own becoming

And not feel guilty

For taking up space at the table.

Tonight, I sit with my loneliness

Like it is an animal that followed me home.

I do not chase it away.

I ask it what it wants.

It says:

Be more than survival.

Be more than what they can consume.

Feed yourself.

So I begin.

I eat my own voice.

I swallow the horizon.

I take up room in my own skin.

I am a woman—

Not empty,

Not ornamental,

Not waiting.

I am full.

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