How fast the emptied shells pile up as your tongue lures slivers of roasted seed out of their flimsy armor— This is not a ritual of feeding so much as enactment of a ticking urge inside you, the one that insists on finishing the smallest task, on bringing every beginning to its close and leaving nothing behind— If only each one were the equivalent of a wish fulfilled: the bomb undetonated, the rifle permanently jammed; every brick and gleaming window back in place at the hospital, the school, the playground, the theatre, the train station. Everyone alive in the country they love— You'd eat until all gourds are hollow, though your lips turn white and your heart inflates like a balloon, swells like a galleon carrying barrels of salt.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
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My heart does inflate when I read that last stanza. Hope. Tears.