Caught in the current; no mass to resist.
She craves careless fingers crusted with cheese dust,
for melting drops of cotton candy ice cream stinging her wrist,
to lick the sticky stain from her bare skin
without counting the cost of each bite.
A swelling gray-green mouth opens and swallows her.
Strange, this envy
for the girl she once was
the seven-year-old self stuck in a home video,
mindlessly shoving pink frosting on white cake
in her mouth, shamelessly
after a slice of pizza, maybe two.
What a blessing, thoughtless hunger
condensed to a flickering light.
That child drifts away.
Salt lingers where calories should.
She treads
in the shallow end of appetite.
Shaky eyes close, she settles.
She always settles
for water.
A blurring line between consuming
and being consumed,
a border blindly crossed.
Each stroke, each searing inhale,
burns her hollow throat clean
as water floods her lungs
and expands the emptiness in her stomach,
her eyes,
her thoughts,
weightless, suspended
where her edges blur to liquid;
an outline blurred, a body beyond counting,
effortlessly unbound
in an endless rushing current.