This week a young girl I was an inpatient with was cremated. A shockingly stark reminder of Anorexia’s power to take lives. It’s so easy to forget the facts. Eating Disorder charity BEAT are clear that “Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder, from medical complications associated with the illness as well as suicide. Research has found that 20% of anorexia sufferers will die prematurely from their illness”.
Hard to deny the seriousness of this illness. Yet, it is so often misunderstood and misjudged.
Star Fall – for S & C
Same sky, different star
Eighteen years
fly fast
Moon behind the clouds
August 2015Sometimes glimpsed
on clearer nights
your incandescence
burning bright
Other times, faded,
harder to see,
a thin ship to sail
on the widest of seas
Sometimes the darkness
covered your face
but couldn’t extinguish
the core of your blaze.
Now, I search the sky
ravage constellations
cry
eyes blind, stream like rain
calling to see
your star again
I reach out
tear black canvas
fingers finding
vacant nucleus
this dark hole,
from which your star fell.
And I howl
at the heavens
And the heavens say to me:
Cry not
for those who fall
for stars who drop
don’t land at all
At once caught up
by beams of sun
the point at which
we’re all begun.
Drawn close to heat
and now they shine
with greater brightness
all the time.
Firefly ©2015
