I am bursting
From stomach to seam
With this overwhelming
Sensation
That some would call
Satiation
But I would call
The enemy

She likes toy soldiers with mustaches
and rolling camels from newspapers
(that way she has something to read when she smokes)

She likes spin the bottle at recycling centers
and starting arguments over produce
(she prefers steamed vegetables, you see)

She adores staycations in someone else's house
and dinner theatre for breakfast
(a little Hamlet and eggs)

She likes every other Tuesday
and clocks with only minute hands
(it's more her speed)

She likes hunting for change in penny arcades
and five & dimes
(but not dollar stores...go figure)

She likes soda crackers (but not soda)
She likes beer nuts (but not beer)
She likes wine cozies (well, you know the rest)

one drop of fruitless satisfaction
two spoonful of unease
three teaspoons of emptiness
four quarts of loose tears

a handful of frustration,
pints of jealousy
gallons of heaviness
dozens of music,
and a sea of thoughts

but a drop is enough for me to drown
My teeth hurts...

I remember cooking for two. Last Sunday afternoon,
the stove light hit the fritz. Same bulb I ******* in the night before you called it quits.
By Tuesday, the burner I simmered onions on
had begun to rust away.
Wet metal tears,
as I sacrificed the dish we loved to the microwave.
Round and round it went. Watching, as the plastic peeled and bent;
remember treating you with the same contempt.
Left with soggy slop and goo; starved for love,
I eat my heart out with a spoon.

Home,
is where the good food is.

Food. What is food?
Is it something everyone needs to survive? Is it the thing that takes forever to make and has even less time time to enjoy?
Is it the beautiful plants that grow in the right season that produces so much pride that they deserve an instagram post?
Or is the thing that many people will never have the money to see?
For me, it is the center of everyday. It is the one thing that I know dictates my entire life. It is the one thing I wish I could forget and the one thing I wish I could live without.
It is the thing that forces me to do math, and it is the thing that keeps me from knowing any sort of satisfaction.
It is the thing that makes me wish I were someone else, anyone else.
It is the thing that I spend hours thinking about, measuring, classifying, and the one thing that I can never seem to get correct. It is also the thing that makes me cry at night. It makes me feel alone.
It is the thing that causes me to spend every day working out even when I don't want to, and it has made me be friends with a scale that isn't very friendly.
It is a bully, a cruel "ex" friend that wishes I were never born and it is a fighter that knows how to pack a heavy punch.
For me, it has not been very kind. It has been the thing that controls who I am.
It is THE thing, and sadly, it is everything.

I burn
beautifully
in the fires of vanity.

Got lost
in my own reflection
on the frozen food doors—
there I was,
lined up with the rest
of the products on ice:

three fifty-nine
for four egg rolls,
six twenty-nine
for frozen bread dough,
six ninety-nine
for wild blueberries.

Superimposed,
my long mug
trying its best
to blend in.

My forehead says
I’m three ninety-nine,
but my solar plexus
clearly marks me
at five fifty-nine.

However,
my **** is, apparently,
on clearance,
reduced by thirty percent,
and
going for a buck nineteen.

At the end of the aisle,
an old lady eyes my biscuits,
rattling her coin purse
like she’s about to
roll a Yahtzee.

I flick my gaze
back to the glass
and my own ghostly image.

What did I
come here for
again?

Bitter, sour, barely sweet,
when I was in your tummy,
you craved that acidic fruit,
and even though we've since leaned towards
different suns and
fermented,
it's still my favorite.

Your twisted seed,
what has become of me?

Growing up your love was a grapefruit.
Pulpy, complex cuts, precision with a tiny knife.
It left a sting on my lips,
but it fed me,
and it gave me vitamins and it was
juicy.
This morning as I consume these two halves I think of us.

Duplicate cells, my pink flesh and thick skin and
biting taste, all from you.
Both of us hollowed out and squeezed until we have nothing left to give, but we're still
bright yellow on the outside.