Hungry to Feel

I’m hungry to feel.

It’s been exactly one month since Skye died.

Gone as quickly as she came into my life. People talk about time stretching after something like this, but mine has stayed rigid, measured in appointments and thank-you notes and the quiet efficiency of days that continue whether I want them to or not.

Skye had jet black hair that never stayed neat, no matter how carefully I brushed it. She smiled with her whole body, as if joy were something physical she had to carry. She was small for her age, quick to laugh, slow to sleep, stubborn about socks and fearless in water. These are facts I can list without my voice changing.

I once experienced joy. Real joy, the kind that doesn’t announce itself because it’s too busy happening. Every day held it in some ordinary way with her - sticky hands, questions that came in bunches, the small weight of her asleep against my chest. Joy wasn’t something I noticed back then. It was the atmosphere. It just was.

I knew the other things too. Fear, when she climbed too high. Sadness, when she cried and I couldn’t fix it fast enough. Exhaustion, impatience, worry. All of it lived alongside the joy, layered and constant.

Then she was taken from me, suddenly, without warning, and everything went quiet. I am left with a body that keeps going, but nothing moves through me. There is no ache, no collapse. Just a wide, empty steadiness that frightens me.

People tell me how strong I’ve been, as if endurance were a virtue I chose. I nod. I thank them. I don’t tell them that I’m hungry - desperately hungry - to feel anything again.

But today, on this one-month mark since she left me, I make a quiet vow. Not to be strong. Not to be graceful. I vow to feel again.

I start at home. I take Skye’s clothes out of the drawers instead of skirting past them, folding each piece carefully, pairing socks that are still slightly stretched from her feet. The room smells like her in a way that feels unfair.

I watch old videos on my phone - her laughing mid-sentence, her face suddenly filling the frame. I wait for something to catch. Nothing does.

I walk to the park next, sit on the bench where I used to watch her climb, play, fall, get back up. I don’t look away when other children run past me. Still nothing.

At lunch I go to her favorite restaurant and order the milkshake she always chose without hesitation - chocolate, extra whipped cream, cherry on top. I drink it slowly, surrounded by families, the sound of children’s voices rising and falling around me. I finish every drop. I feel full. I feel nothing else.

That evening I babysit her cousin, whose laugh is indistinguishable from hers. I read her a story, brush her teeth, tuck her into Skye’s bed. When she falls asleep, I stay in the rocking chair beside her, the way I used to, and let my eyes close there. Maybe I’ll dream of Skye, I think. Maybe that’s how it will come back to me.

It doesn’t.

***

Two weeks pass, and I meet my mother for lunch.

She reaches across the table before we’ve even ordered, her hand warm around mine. “How are you doing, love?” she asks, carefully, like the answer might shatter if she presses too hard.

“It’s weird, Mom,” I say. “I remember it all. I know how much I loved her. I can list everything about her like facts I memorized for a test.” I pause, searching for something that still isn’t there. “But I don’t feel any of it. It’s like the connection between the memory and the emotion is gone.”

She watches me, tearfully.

“I’m not sad. I’m not angry. I’m not broken down. I wake up, I eat, I work, I sleep. I function. Everyone keeps telling me how strong I am, and all I can think is that strength shouldn’t feel this hollow.” My voice stays even, which feels like another failure. “It’s like I’m just… here.”

My mother gets up and sits beside me, her arm around my shoulders, crying for both of us, while I stare at a framed print of an open field on the wall.

Mom orders the potato soup. I order a Cobb salad I won’t finish. The waiter nods, pen moving across his notepad, and for a moment everything feels suspended - voices overlapping, silverware clinking, life continuing.

Then I see him.

A boy at a table across the room, maybe seven, his face suddenly wrong. His mouth opens. No sound comes out. His chair scrapes backward as his parents stand at the same time, both talking, both reaching for him without knowing where to put their hands.

“He’s choking,” someone says.

I’m already out of my chair. There’s no thought, no decision. My body moves like it’s been waiting for instructions it finally understands. I step behind him, wrap my arms around his small middle. I feel the sharp outline of his ribs, the terrifying lightness of his weight.

I pull once.

Nothing.

Again - harder -

- and I hear it before I see it, the wet, ugly sound of air forcing its way back in.

The food hits the floor. The boy coughs, loud and furious and alive. He cries. His parents grab him, thanking me, shaking. Someone touches my shoulder. Someone asks if I’m a nurse. I shake my head. It doesn’t matter.

I walk back to my table on legs that don’t feel like mine. My hands are shaking. My chest burns. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts.

And then, something gives.

It comes the way circulation does after a limb has fallen asleep - first a rush, then pain, then heat I can’t escape.

My breath stutters.

My vision blurs.

Skye floods back in fragments I can’t control: her running down the hallway in socks, the first moment I held her against my chest in the hospital, the way she said my name when she was tired, the way she ran to me after her first day of kindergarten as if I were the only place she could land.

It isn’t beautiful. It hurts.

The knowledge that she is gone doesn’t arrive as a thought or a fact, but as something physical. Something only I have to carry.

I fold forward, gasping, and my mother is there immediately, pulling me against her, my face pressed into her chest as I breathe hard and break open. She holds me the way she did when I was small, her hand firm at my back, anchoring me while I sob into her sweater.

The pain quickly filled the space I kept empty.

I miss her.

The thought is simple.

The grief is not.

For the first time since Skye died, I am no longer hungry.