I love to offer you the last bite;
this is new for me. I eat, and I mean
Eat! Before any meal is over
I’m dreaming of the next one.
I always eat most and fastest and I want
a bite of yours too. Folks say stay hungry
and don’t mean it literally but I mean it
literally because when you’ve counted
almonds and grams and know
how many calories live in one lick of a postage stamp
gluttony is a gift. I’m not embarrassed
to overdo it, or at least less so
than I was before. Let everyone know:
even when I’m full, I'm starving. Y’all get it.
I want to fill my fucking plate! I want it piled high
with Everything. Candied and crusted,
salty, briny as the seas I’ve tasted (and those
I haven’t), bright as fluorescence, tangy
enough to pucker my lips as if to kiss
the air itself. Give me umami, give me white-hot
then creamy. Glossy and starchy and stretchy,
crunchy pillowy saucy yes I want to be sick
with want and then fulfillment, haunted by mouth
-feels I’ve yet to imagine. I want to eat and eat
and eat with you until I'm consumed.
Lay me out, a main on the table.
All the sides and soups, too. Nose to tail,
not just my prize cuts—breast, tender
loin, rump—the gamey stuff, the hard bits,
simmered long and soft and succulent, pearly fat
rendered for a fry-up, all the little joints salted and cracked
open to the marrow, and then, at the end,
when all that’s left of me is one gleaming morsel,
I will raise my fork to your lips and, with any luck,
you will open your delicious mouth
and take it.
