Hollow

By: Emily Wilkinson

I am in love with a girl… who is afraid of breakfast,

who brews coffee in the morning like gasoline feeding a starving engine.

Her fingers dance around the machinery of her waist out of step with reality.

She wanders to the kitchen at night like an astronaut clawing her way through the dark,

drawn to the frozen light of the refrigerator like a moth to a flame,

counting calories instead of sheep.

I am in love with a girl who never sleeps.

I smile at her,

and she smiles back.

The mirror is cold, and her coffee sits on the countertop, untouched and stagnating.

I am in love with a girl who doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror anymore,

and neither do I.