Most days, I forget to eat.
Not that I have some sort of underlying, anorexic aspirations
of being a waifish, Kate-Moss type. No rather, food has just fallen off the To-Do
list, beat out by all the other overwhelming tasks.
Until, I look in the mirror and wonder why the woman looks
gaunt and skeletal. And the clothes hang strangely and I am reminded that I
have no money to buy clothes and my pants are once again falling off. I used to
be pleasantly plump—a little extra padding around my organs.
Now I wonder at the stranger staring out at me from that
world behind the mirror. Who is she? Will she survive this? How do I nourish her? And the lovely words of Derek Walcott float out…
Love after Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
-Derek Walcott
