Dreams of a Feast

To the person that leaves me hungry,
whose voice I hear softly speaking in my heightened hearing,
who fills my stomach with emptiness, hidden in the shadow of my room,
The one that speaks to me through my phone
with her digital tongue to say I’m sorry we missed each other
To whom I address emails strung together like paperless chains to say
I’m sorry, I’ll be home late again and again and again
To the person I find evidence of in dinners left on the stove
whose trails I follow around the kitchen
Whose daily activities I surmise, but am never sure about
at times questioning your existence,
wondering if I’m losing my mind,
If I haven’t placed these crumbs by accident for me to later find
and follow ever hopeful, never knowing where it winds
until I’m lost again in the kitchen.
To the person whose footsteps echo within,
Who moves pots and pans like a poltergeist, I beg you:

Let yourself be seen, the light bouncing off your skin in beams
sating my eyes permanently, to savor when closed.
Doubt is itself a kind of hunger.
Figure flees memory and I feed on legend.
I tap morse at maybe-adjacent walls, a prayer-meal.
There are weeks on end where the most we can do is tantalize each other this way.
Some nights, I tap and you don’t tap back.
My void is nourished by drywall reverberations whose whispers mean I am alone,
I fall asleep, my stomach ingesting itself on the imaginary fruit.


Some nights, I dream of a feast,
Of eating and eating at a table I cannot see the other end of,
You opposite me,
Obscured by apples, piled high like dunes,
verdant broccoli-mountains, Cliffs of steak,
I dream of growing larger and larger as I eat my terraformation,
Clearing a path to you, stomach aching from the exertion
Seams popping searing pain through my torso
Spine screaming, pelvis to skull
But I will not stop, not this time,
And just as I reach over to remove that last roll exposing the top of your head
I am bursting awake in the emptiness of my room,
Reaching for hands,
Clinging to sheets,
Soaking my shirt,
Crying your name like vomit.