The Body Remembers

I do not speak
but the body does.
It tells you things
I’d rather keep quiet—
the tremble of spoon to bowl,
the hollow behind my eyes.

They say I am disappearing.
They say it like it’s a tragedy,
like they didn’t watch
while I unravelled.

I wake with my mouth full
of numbers.
Calories.
Failures.
Tiny violences I invite
just to feel control.

No one sees
the mirror I carry
inside me.
No one sees
what I trade
for silence.

My sister hums
in the next room—
alive, loud, real.
I try to remember
how that felt.
To want.
To need.

But I’ve trained the wanting
out of me.
Worn it down
to a hunger
I never feed.

Some days,
I’m just a shadow
pulling on sleeves
that no longer fit.
But once—
once,
I was made of music
and not bone.