READING 2 ︎︎︎ Dark Spots

It is easy to starve yourself in a city as big as New York. I’ve whittled away inches of myself, bit by bit and bite by bite, in every cold clammy, drunken night and passing of the plate – the hunger settles in somewhere deep, resting its head as I dizzily search for my humility on a stranger’s bathroom floor. Every building on 3rd Avenue has seen the worst parts of myself. The reflections of store windows hold countless glances that appear as vanity but sit in a deeply banal fear – am I taking up too much space? Am I being too much? Does caring about being too much count as self awareness? Is this being chill? How do chill people *KNOW* they’re chill?

Hunger is a lack yet somehow I am full of it. Somewhere in the pile of receipts and loose change at the bottom of my purse lies my most truthful self – one that continues to fumble around in the darkness, grasping for the thing that is always just out of reach. I want to believe in God, I want to call my parents just for the hell of it, I want to be a person who doesn’t need to be reminded that love exists and it exists for me. I want and want and want and then I take all of that desire and swallow it whole, the only meal I need until the craving strikes again.