Bon Appétit

 Eva Evans '21

She was a big eater.

She devoured everything she saw with a bursting passion,

Nibbled on snowflakes and licked at summer ponds.

Tasted the crimson September air and

Spit out the bitter words the boys told her, coughing and sputtering on their foul insults.

She much preferred her delectable dessert of starry skies and the delicious smell of winter pines,

And the words in her favorite books that made her mouth water.

She brought her spoon everywhere to sample different days and moments, she wanted everything, her stomach was restless for adventure.

She didn’t understand when people said they weren’t hungry.

She was always hungry.

A driving, determined kind of hunger,

That set her off searching for the meal that might finally leave her satisfied.

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If she was anything, it was full.

Full of aching regret that stole every instinct of appetite from her chest.

She hugged it tight, because to crush this nausea was the only way to keep her heart from ripping open.

She had been holding this pain and truth down for too long, so long that it made her head spin with impossible wishes, a dizzying sorrow.

Sprinkled with guilt by someone who had jerked a shaker up and down a little too violently,

And left a pile of something that only needed a pinch.

The kind of too much that makes you sick.

She didn’t know if she could hide this remorse for one minute longer, and feared if she stopped suppressing it, it would rise and spill out into the hands of the wrong person.

And leave her gagging, embarrassed

Of the consequences of biting off more than you can chew.

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The girl with the empty stomach, who was always impatient and unhappy with her current treat, and the girl who couldn’t get rid of her last poisoning feast fast enough.

They couldn’t have been more different, except they were more similar than they understood.

Because they both shared a common beverage.

The unsettling burden of loneliness.

The empty girl met the one in pain and she ate her sorrow.

All of it.

She let it spill into an eager cup and pressed it to her lips kindly.

She gulped all of her sadness down where her new friend wouldn’t have to let it build inside her, cut her guilt into pieces that weren’t so overwhelming, that were easier to chew, and gave the reeling girl someone who listened.

Someone who cared for her and someone who didn’t judge her suffering, just let her talk about it.

Suddenly, the girl who was full didn’t feel so heavy anymore.

And what of her friend, who had picked apart the world in search of something to make her feel complete?

She thought she’d tried everything, but it turns out she had never tasted the sugar sweet of a best friend.