THE WHOLE BEAST

Everyone around me keeps telling me to settle for crumbs because that’s what is abundance all about. See, that blonde woman with her inventory of mercies, my aunt whispers as if I’m supposed to build a house from that and say thank you for the scraps while someone else eats the entire roast. I know what happens to women with shrunken appetites. Or worse, those that eat their stomach lining so as not to starve. While my grandmother disappeared into the kitchen, my mother became one of the wisps steam rising off boiling beans. My older sister buried her hunger in the backyard, then proceeded to spend thirty years pretending she didn’t know where the smell was coming from. I refuse to frame my deprivation with tenderness. There’s no such wisdom in wanting less, even learning to do so. So what, if desire amputates one finger at a time until my hands are too small to hold anything worth holding. They offer me shadows, turmeric-stained memories of warmth, ask me to stop complaining about the cold. But mother, I know what it’s like to be greedy, how to open my mouth wide enough to swallow stars, and never for once apologize for the size of my throat. Let them have humble portions of their modest joys. I want the whole beast, blood and all. Crack the bones and suck the marrow. And if it kills me, at least I’ll know I died with my mouth full. At dinner, my daughter tells me Nelly called her kind. I wonder whether I should teach her to measure exactly how much heat it takes to stop being hungry forever.