Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

I furl myself in the quilt like an oyster in its shell with no pearl to show for the grit that works through it. Pain and blood, grief and hunger. To be a woman is a horror I can little comprehend.

Anxiety burns bright within me like a night flare at sea.

Her need is not a weakness or a threat to her own survival. It gives her power.

How frightening it would be to die, but how great a relief to sleep forever.

I think about taking a hairpin and ramming it into the jelly of my eye.

“I want … I want to feel free. I am like a hand that has been grasped so tightly around something that it has gone numb.” I close my eyes, letting the tears that need to come spill over and pass away. “I want to let go. I want to feel.”

All we can hope for in life is to know one’s own desires in order to be able to act on them. To want is to surrender to uncertainty. To step

into the unknown. To expose ourselves to all possible outcomes and trust we will not be destroyed by disappointment.