A Poem: The Space Between Here and Neither

Image: Amy Goh

here in my head, this avalanche always
tripping the cliff-knees of my bended
legs propped upright over the edge,
seeing life like a sugar glaze that can’t
be touched at a distance, glimmering,
the far-away horizon, that this journey
sometimes wavers like a still flimsy line-
this year of magical thinking, of inverted
hurricanes, of trying to will myself into
wellness, fullness, whole-of-body-of-heart
a thread inconsequential, wishing to thread
the line, to walk the tightrope, to be normal
for just this once, this one time, lodged within
eternity.

from this ravaged vessel of my body, sailing
upon a turbulent sea, wishing– that I could
once be rid of this whirlwind of nonsensical
thinking, of compulsive existing. To the single,
solemn wish dangling upon a string: to, to–

be. Not a victim of my biological drive to eat,
to fill up this lacunae within me, but to just–
be, to live, to reach and touch and feel another
being close to my skin; to slip into a seal skin
and disappear into the sea; to sink into sublimity;
to lose myself in the world’s embrace, because
he was my first love, and then I left him for my
self-created hell.

Note from the author:

This poem/journal entry was written right at the beginning of my physical recovery from malnutrition.

I was flooded by extreme hunger determined to follow each craving to its logical end in order to heal my relationship with my body.

This was written in an effort to come to terms with my distorted relationship with my body and to examine how far I had come, even if I was, at that time, in a really uncomfortable limbo where nothing was certain.