Kayla Jessop
Notes on Hunger
I. Prelude: What the Body Wants
Every morning, I woke swallowed by nausea, a metallic taste sharpening its teeth on the hunger;
my daughter turning quietly inside me, learning to float through the hunger.
Hyperemesis dictated what I could bear, what I could cradle: my body grew and declined
around her. Still, she grew– according to the limits of a body in crisis, knowing only hunger.
II. 30 Weeks of Gestation
Preeclampsia: severe features– her heart thump was reassuring, though my nerves did not settle as the nurse monitored, tightened belts, adjusted sensors, coaxing reassurance from the hunger.
NST rooms exist outside of time and space, measuring soft heart thumps and sharp breaths. Silence is its own diagnosis, the doctor charts, writing in cursive: fetus declining due to hunger.
III. Food as Future-Tense
In the hum of pre-planned NICU stays, I spent days preparing postpartum meals: turkey brine
recipes to freeze. I chopped onions like a mantra, each slice offering a plea to the hunger.
I planned postpartum meals like they were an entree entering the table too early, the goal
being 34, 35, but never past 37 weeks. I picked at each recipe, my hands unable to obey hunger.
IV. Threshold
Iron‑tanged headaches, spiking pressure, blurred visions: the chart grew heavy with failed tests;
doctors marked thresholds of viability, frantic that poor weekly readings outweighed the hunger.
I kept our overnight bags in the car: each NST ended by fleeing to labor and delivery,
only to be sent home with more monitoring: no one certain we’d both survive the hunger.
V. Induction
At 35 weeks, we reached the threshold our bodies could handle, having to end there:
they said your body is failing her– she must exit through the hunger.
You kept her in as long as you could, the doctor assured, as they sliced my abdomen in half
with gloved urgency, their hands descending into my womb, lifting her out of hunger.
VI. NICU
Under warming lights, she practiced her breathing: clad in wires and tubes, her chest
rose and fell. I watched each movement, her chest rising like a fragile tide in hunger.
Nurses fed, measured, and charted; I hovered outside my own body again– a useless failure.
I plead with someone, anyone: please, let her fight to feed outlast the hunger.
VII. Aftermath
On day seven, we entered her home nursery, swaddled tightly in warmth and remaining pleas.
Fed by our freezer trays, every warm meal is a reminder to myself: I am rising from the hunger.
Remember, remember: pack away her hospital blankets and bracelets that read Jessop’s Girl.
Set them in a shadow box, a testament in our living room—proof we have come beyond hunger.
Kayla Jessop (she/her) has an MFA from Lindenwood University. Her essays have been published in various award-winning literary magazines, including Harpur Palate, Blood Orange Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Welter, and Broad River Review, among others. She does her best writing while daydreaming about possibilities in coffee shops. In her free time, when Kayla’s not teaching, she is a mother who does mediocre crochet and watches New Girl.