ELEVEN

I don't remember when the hunger stopped hurting.

I think that's the part nobody tells you. That there's a point, somewhere after the third day or maybe the fourth, when your stomach gives up asking. It just goes quiet. Like it forgot what it was supposed to want.

I remember warmth more than anything. The feeling of someone's arms and the way it made the rest of the world feel very far away and unimportant. I used to think that feeling would always be there when I needed it. I didn't know it was something that could run out.

I didn't understand, for a long time, what was happening to me. I kept thinking someone would come. That's the thing about being a child — you always believe, right until the very end, that someone is coming. You think the door is about to open. You think you can hear footsteps. You think: any moment now.

Any moment now.

I wasn't angry. I want someone to know that. I was never angry. I was just very tired, and then the tired became something softer — like the feeling just before sleep, when the edges of everything go warm and loose and it doesn't seem so important anymore to hold on.

I don't know how long it took.

I only know that at some point the waiting stopped.

And the strange thing — the thing I still don't understand — is that even at the very end, I wasn't afraid. I just kept thinking someone was coming.

I was so sure.

I was so sure someone was coming.