allstarvedout

[allstarvedout]

My sweet baby, I still call for you— I miss your innocence, soft as morning light, before the age of five, when the world was still gentle.

Dear little child, are you still inside me?

Do you still wonder what happened?

How we got here?

Why we carved sorrow into our own skin— the skin our mother made,

the skin once untouched, now haunted by hands,

used, bruised, abandoned.

My sweet child, hush now, don't worry.

We still have each other— a ghost of you lingers in me, a whisper of who we were before the breaking.

My sweet angel, we are out of this world now, drifting beyond reach, beyond harm.

No one will touch us again, I swear.

I won't hurt our skin again.

I won't sink into the depths of hell, laying our body bare for a love that never stays.

My sweet baby, I promise—| won't.

I will cradle you now, shield you from the storm.

Dear little child, I love you.

[allstarvedout]

I do not hunger for flesh—I hunger for love.

For warmth. For arms that do not take, but hold.

My whole life, I have been an echo in the mouths of older men,

a body to be praised, a thing to be seen but never truly known.

At 12, I wandered into the glow of lonely screens,

where their words fell like honey, thick and sweet—

“You’re so beautiful.”

“Your body is perfect.”

And I, starved for tenderness, mistook their hunger for love.

So I gave them what they asked for.

Not realizing I was only feeding their need, not filling my own.

Now, I crave something real.

I want to be held without expectation,

to rest in an embrace that asks for nothing in return.

I want hands that do not reach to take,

but to remind me that I am still here.

That I am worth something beyond my body, beyond my reflection.

That I am more than what has been done to me.

When will it be my turn?

I only want to know what love feels like.

Truly.

Before I go.

[allstarvedout]

I drift through the school halls like a ghost of glass,

untouched, unseen, slipping between voices

that rise and fall like tides

I will never wade into.

They move like constellations,

hands grazing, laughter spilling—

soft gold pooling in open palms.

They gather warmth like breath,

like second nature,

while I stay cold in my quiet.

How do they bear the weight of it,

the reaching, the holding, the needing?

If I stretched my hands to meet theirs,

I think I would vanish

beneath the ache of belonging.

I do not speak unless pulled from silence,

not for lack of words,

but for too many—

stacked like brittle bones in my chest,

too sharp to free,

too fragile to break.

Connection is a bridge with no promise,

a step into mist with no end in sight.

Perhaps I am safer here,

on the edge of the world,

where solitude does not ask me to pretend.

I do not crave voices,

do not hunger for chatter.

Speech is a currency I do not spend,

a weight I do not carry.

But I listen.

I collect the unspoken—

the tremble of hesitation,

the sigh between syllables,

the glance that lingers too long.

I gather them like pressed flowers,

fold them into the quiet of my ribs,

where they live, where they whisper,

where they never let me go.

I care too much, and it is my curse.

To feel everything, to hold it all inside,

until my skin is the only thing

keeping me from spilling.