Hunger Pains

Crystal Sidell

How do
you grieve?
I’m a masochist,
I suppose.
I sniff clothes
in long unopened
drawers. Touch
loose threads at the hem
and pull, pull, pull –
unraveling what I love most.
Old comforts unburied.
Buttons that I chip
my teeth on,
before swallowing whole.
(The hollow deep
enough to fold into.)
A shoelace
wound ’round my finger
’til the skin’s blue-cold.
Pockets yanked inside out,
spilling memories
at my feet. Let me eat
these too, dust and all.
Coughing, choking on the
remnants of wide-eyed trust,
blindness sends me
to my knees.
Digested happiness
is my anguish;
always I
hunger for what is
no more.

---

Crystal Sidell moderates Pause for Poetry (est. 2012) and Wordsmiths (est. 2015) and also reviews books for FLYP, the Florida Library Youth Program. Her fiction and poems have appeared in 34 Orchard, 50 Haikus, Horror Magazine, Invoking Chaos, Quarantine Quanta, The Scribe, and Triangle Writers Magazine. Her debut novel REPETITION was published in June. Twitter: @sidellwrites, Instagram: @sidellwrites.

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