appetite

Inspired by Sarah's latest Wislawa Szymborska post and life.

--

appetite

How easy to love the ones who love us back!
To crawl through the eons that separate face from face,
to fight with such intensity that your wounded
hearts only grow closer on reconciling.

How hard it is to love the ones
who do not love us back,
whose battles become permanent wedges and tight smiles.
How many of them life hands us
until to love becomes
a duty
an obligation
a responsibility.

A weary hand feeding its body
purely out of necessity
with food that lost its taste
long ago.

How this heart craves the flavor
this palate is denied.
How this mind longs for meanings
this throat wishes it could choke down.

Instead,
this shell lives in seas
of cold oatmeal and spoons clinked with haste.
The machine requires sustenance
to keep loving
without receiving
(with a secret hope
that one day
the clouds will thunder into existence
machines who love back).

-Anita
--