Hollow

Hollow was written in October of 2021 for this project.

This poem is an attempt to communicate my feelings towards myself and my desires in regards to my own eating disorder. Much of the existing media surrounding EDs focuses on the obsession with thinness and appearnace, so I wanted to shed a light on another aspect of the illness — the physical sensation of hunger.

The reader gets in look into the narrator's thoughts on their journey to becoming "hollow," without food.

Themes:
  • Eating disorder
  • Self-harm
Without substance there is
nothing.
The goal to be
barren, void.
It’s all I am, and
it’s what I desire.
All for a
grave emptiness
in the core that
gives way to my
perfection.
I can feel the lining
inside twisting and
writhing in want for fodder,
a thrumming in the veins
echoing in the vacancy,
but I can’t let go now.
Not when I’m
so close.
The pain is the proof.
Proof that it’s working,
that I’m withering, wasting
into sharpness and pallidity.
Bruising and blood-thinning,
a blueness under the eye,
the panging at the root,
the wrongness of it all —
it’s a vicious ecstasy.
Ecstasy to be hollow.
These lines are expressing the narrator's desire to be void, to feel that pure feeling of being hungry.
Their eating disorder, and the obsession with that empty feeling has completely overtaken them. It's all they are.
They're convinced that being thin is perfect — the answer to all their problems.
The hunger, the feeling of starvation, is intense, but not enough to stop.
The agony of starvation, the fatigue, the mental/emotional pain are all proof that they're successfully destroying themselves, that much closer to perfection.
Radio Static - Sound Effect from Audio Library