Walking through the locked hallways,
I imagine maniacal sounds—people howling,
the indecipherable wails of a man
tearing apart a book as he looks for
the one sentence that will save him.
Instead, there is only the blaring
silence marked by squeaking soles.
 
In the corridor for people who will not eat,
there are no mirrors, only Hockney posters—
blue sky, blue pool, green palms, sun.
The hall appears too cheerful
for the young girls who seem to float by,
girls who may want to be invisible
or defined by the spaces they have emptied.
 
My daughter does not want to eat. I think
I can understand: there’s purity in restraint.
The body becomes a temple of denial
and grace. She waves to us from her room
and I recall the days when she stopped eating,
my wife and I finally raging at each other—
the hunger beginning to consume our lives.