In desperation she begged, Can you help me? I don’t want to hurt anyone.
He blinked with softened brown eyes. Arms crossed over his chest, his posture was stoic and silent, He wasn’t cold. But her words asked for too much. Protecting the perimeter, he wouldn’t submit to answer.
Can you help me? She tasted starvation, the absence, the lack. She couldn’t fix it, she didn’t know what to eat, who to touch, what to say. It was too quiet, and too dead in her head, in her heart, was it always so quiet? She couldn’t remember. She didn’t want to hurt anyone else, and she already knew that the hunger ate from the inside out.
She is hungry. Everyone is hungry. Perceiving she was not the only one. It is just the degree that you could possibly admit it, or even that you should admit it. Hunger. Because you can go without. You can starve. Especially for a good reason. Starve from lack of food, lack of love, lack of people. Starve while you consuming everything. But how can you reach that buried desire? Of the aching twisted soul. Your ordinary chicken soup of spirituality will not ever touch this dulled groan.
So what satisfies the starving soul? Not simple clips of advice from your prettiest coffee table book. Not feel-good TED Talks to tell her how to hide the hunger. She needs to feel it. To taste the nothing. So it would be clearly savored when she finally could taste something real.
And then. Still. Nothing. Tasting the bland blanched wilderness under her tongue. Recognizing the absence. Remembering the nothing now fills her with flavor. Bitter-breath hope of what should be. Tomorrow? The next day? What does it taste like until then?
She could gorge on the dust and the mud and the smut. Shoveling into her belly as a landfill bloats with trash. She could binge on the overflowing buffet of lies, unbuttoning her pants, stuffing sugar packets in her pockets. Sinking under junk everyone else calls sustenance. Open you lips, they say, so that your mouth will be stuffed full.
Starving for answers begs for a story of truth. Her pallet is being refined.
She seals her lips. And her mouth salivates to declare His praise.
