By Maddison O'Donnell
She thinks – nay, knows who she is when camped out
alone, digesting a spoilt slice of humble pie she’d been
served on a storming Wednesday night. Belly rebelling,
she flicks through the viscous middle of old
conversations sticky with unmeaning, only tasting
the icing sugar coating the warmed minceword meat.
With salt of the earth crusting her lips, she scarfs
the last stale biscuit crumbs of the known world.
Biting, chewing, swallowing.
Overripe earth drips down her chin.
Villainized, teeth soiled with pride, shes
crimps the meal’s toughest gristle – a cud
to gnaw through the nocturnal descent
into some dark unknown.
Not having been handed the world on a silver platter, but the moon on a wooden spike –
it glows and melts on her tongue, easy-like,
devoured whole like a soft, singed mallow plucked fresh from a forest pyre.
Satiety: to eat what is yours, not what is offered.