The Breaths Held In

Tomorrow begins with a tremble,

a breath caught in the chest —

a diet,

a shift,

a silence where indulgence once sang.

And I feel unsteady.

Wary of less.

Uneasy in the face of not enough.

I wobble beneath the weight of fear.

It fills me with dread:

of hunger,

of time running thin,

of life hollowing out beneath my feet.

Why must I feast before each new start,

only to break before I even begin?

Why does hunger feel like doom

when once it felt like divinity?

I remember the girl who starved,

who danced with bones under skin,

who felt the rush of emptiness

like wings unfolding in her chest.

She was powerful.

She was hollow.

And that hollow felt holy.

But now —

now, I fear that void.

Not just the ache in the belly,

but the kind behind the eyes —

the one that gnaws at joy

and leaves nothing but

voiceless panic.

Hunger is no longer just hunger.

It’s the ghost of depression —

the echo of months

when emptiness swallowed everything.

It’s the fear of becoming hollow again —

not just in body,

but in life.

How can I starve

without starving my soul?

So fear consumes me,

and to fill the hollow shape of my heart,

I fill myself instead.

I stuff silence with noise

so the emptiness won’t echo too loud.

Once, I stood at the edge of morning,

and the day opened like a cliff.

I looked down,

and vertigo overcame me —

a dizzy ache in my chest,

as if one breath

might send me spilling

over the precipice of life.

That is the feeling of emptiness.

Of slowly vanishing.

A quiet unraveling.

The sense of slipping away,

as if who I am

were dissolving

into a life with nothing to hold me.

And so I fall —

into the void that never ends,

wrapped in lonely silence.

The morning breaks,

but I remain in shadow,

held in a hush too deep to name.

I ask,

Who am I?

Do I matter?

But the void gives no answer.

That is the shape of my fear —

not hunger,

not weight,

but the weightlessness

of not knowing myself.

Still —

there is another truth

beneath this trembling skin,

waiting like light beneath water.

Maybe perfection

is a myth I no longer need to chase.

Maybe I never had to earn

the right to breathe —

not by starving,

not by striving.

Maybe missing a workout

is not a failure.

Skipping a rule,

not a sin.

Maybe the world

will not implode

if I rest.

I am tired

of feeding silence with noise,

of mistaking motion

for meaning,

of calling control

peace.

I don’t have to cope with food.

I don’t have to armor myself with urgency.

I can choose

a gentler freedom —

one that nourishes

not just my body,

but my life.

Let me be free,

not from hunger,

but from fear.

Let me be full —

not of food,

but of life,

of breath,

of being.

Something gentler stirs.

A quiet resilience

sparks inside me,

a desire to end the war

raging inside me.

I am learning

to be full in new ways —

not with food

or frenzy,

but with life.

With softness.

With breath.

With being.

I am learning that I exist,

even in the times in between,

even in the breaths held in.

Let tomorrow come.

Let it tremble.

Let it teach me.

I will not vanish

just because I am still.

I will not break

just because I am hungry.

I will not run

from the edge of myself.

Because even on the cliffside,

even in the quiet,

I am here.

And that is enough.