On ‘Hunger Makes for Great Discipline’

The empty-stomach paintbrush meets canvas

knife-sharp with ease, and the

half-eaten apple rots on the counter.

The writer as she writes is not a writer:

She is her pen—

the artist a brush, the mechanic a wrench,

the body a conduit of the tool of the trade;

craft the only way to satiation,

physicality a distraction to creativity

either in body or in mind,

neither mind nor body.

Nevermind.

I was craving starvation.

The meat of it is meaning,

meaning fulfillment—

eating fulfillment,

served with a side of displaced discomfort in fullness.

It’s how, somehow,

a lunch-hungry tummy means

money-hungry,

drug-hungry,

slumber-hungry,

fresh washed laundry-hungry,

long periods of hair-hungry,

love-hungry,

lust-hungry,

home-hungry,

owning my own-hungry.

The discomfort of being fed,

and the never-right vice.

I am not a victim.