I remember the first time I was in a hallway with shrunken hips.
I remember the summer that I half disappeared, holding tight to my bones so they wouldn’t press out of my aching edges.
My peers would report a rattle, but I knew it was me. I wasn’t excellent against the wind and water, I just was.
Not a shrunken head, no voodoo doll,
Just a skinny girl with a too-big soul.
Wonderful poem. I especially love the first 3 lines!
Oh, sweetheart đ
This is achingly, painfully honest and completely heartbreaking. I can’t pick one word or one phrase that I like the most because ALL of it captured me. You downplay everything, but this is so painful to read so I can hardly think of how difficult this was to write and I have come back to this poem time and time again. You are a POET.
wonderful that it says everything so plainly and is still a mystery, too delicate to impose mu own reading on it, but if I can draw from it, there was the time my 11-12 year old was deeply troubled and finally we noticed how dangerously thin she had become. That is the crisis of tears you draw from me.
This is so powerful, concise, and aching.
A very potent poem. The lines ” I remember the summer that I half disappeared, holding tight to my bones so / they wouldnât press out of my aching edges.” especially stopped me in my tracks, and made me gasp; the suffering here is so palpable!