Hunger: A zuihitsu

How long does the heart hold in its knotted-up angers? Five bitter knobs of green plum on a plate, to dip in salt.

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The taste of glutamates and nucleotides. In other words, what’s savory stands out from a background— gash of seawater in a runnel of sand.

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Chilled water in a metal cup. The white flesh of a coconut, young flag swirling to the bottom.

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What is the condition of wanting something you have no name for yet? I scanned the grocery store shelves, the produce bins— and registered only the color green.

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My love dropped a rind, a disc of volatile oils, into the broth. Far away, a hundred mouths opened in an orchard awash with amber.

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Some days, I feel as though I skim only the surface. There are so many things to mend, to read, to wash, to pay.

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I stacked loose granite slates against the rotted wood of the shed. Before they took them away, the animals had made a bed in one corner, and left their droppings in another.

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Is it my imagination when I say I remember the way water, soup, cold milk coursed down my throat— to flood the ducts ending at my nipples, positioned in my nursing daughter’s mouth?

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We did not see how the moon hung larger than a hive, a paper lantern, a parchment dish. And yet we ate from it nightly.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Missing.

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