Reached for: Soft Foods

What is reached for is softness in the mouth — the earliest register of being fed, taken alone, at the age of an adult. Behind it is deep unfed grief and a settled belief that offered care is likely to be laced with something, so the longing is kept and the source is never approached. The reading here is a shape, not a diagnosis: an inherited conclusion of being unfit to be taken in, formed where the feeding was unreliable; what it asks for is to be nourished once by someone else's hand without testing it first.

I want food that doesn't need chewing, and comfort that doesn't need asking for.

Demophon, the child at Demeter's hearth whose immortal nursing was broken off mid-rite by a mother's cry. The task is to let a feeding be resumed by someone other than himself.