Writers Jam

what does a child do when everyone is asleep? this one tiptoes into the kitchen– a place he would soon make a shrine of– and tips spoonful after spoonful of benadryl into his throat, pausing only when the bottle turns see-through. he slips back into bed, tongue sickeningly sweet from the act. the week after, it's the bucket of yoghurt he laps up kneeling in the glow of the fridge. then the rasna mother restocked for summer, twenty two glasses (as the label claims) of powder that return as bile. by the time he grows up, he both knows and does not know hunger. he feeds and the pit inside balloons to the width of him. he is so full he is empty.