My cousin Anais sincerely believes that hunger is something powerful,
something men desire in women like a soldier feels a lump
in his throat before thumbing the trigger.
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve come down to the kitchen
in the middle of the night and seen her
standing in the light of the open refrigerator, naked,
stuffing orange slices into her dark mouth, sticky and sweet as resin,
only to turn around and hear the sound
of retching, of someone emptying the contents of their stomach
down the drain, much the same way
in which the night sky lets loose its stars like bile
over millions of acres of land.
A finger can be something beautiful, something that strokes
piano keys and bandages children’s wounds,
something that contains the entire emotion of a single human being
in its joints. Or it can be a device for turning the body
inside out, like a rag doll that is split open with a seam ripper
to remove the surplus stuffing.
If math has anything to do with this, I could multiply
23 by 7 five times and still not get any close
to the number of times Anais has ripped herself apart,
like Moses parting the Red Sea.
I will never forget the day my uncle left a note for her
on the bathroom mirror of our house:
Anais, be good to yourself today.
At the bottom of the note she responded in Sharpie-
I always am.