Wedges of white bread with the crusts torn off
topped with sun-bright circles of cooled egg yolk
often became my meager substitute
for the heaping piles of meat that constituted any worthy feast
at least in the books I read
If I couldn’t have sausage or pastrami
rippling with fat and the exertion of the working woman
at least I had my imagination
The solo games I played with myself—
Wish-fulfillment fantasies brimming over with jugs of dark wine
and steaming platters of crab legs smothered in golden butter—
quickly gave way to no hedonism at all
It felt, after all, inauthentic to dream up such idyllic scenes
(bereft as they were of conflict
or naughty fairies consigning mere mortals to centuries of servitude
upon plucking an innocent delicacy off a perfectly polished plate)
with all I knew of hunger and longing
So the last rectangle of bread, pebbled over by graying egg yolk
was hastily stuffed into a ragged paper towel
and shoved into a leather messenger bag
that I slung casually over one shoulder
eyes shifting right and left to assess all possible peril
on the landmine-strewn trail from the kitchen table
across the living room
(surrounded by loud TV, angry dad, and raucous children
just beyond the double-paned windows)
and up the creaky cement stairs
Home base, at last! (also known as the strip of ragged carpet
between my bed and the black-and-white TV)
so versatile it could be a dank and winding tunnel
in a labyrinth of arcane corridors
or the open road, bookended by soft earth and cloudless sky
In this place I could rest my weary head
unwrap my hard-earned crusts of stale bread
and gaze toward a horizon numbered by several pairs
of anonymous glittering eyes
In this place
no longer a slave to my greed
or my longing for palatial sweetmeats
I could evenly distribute my meager meal
to the anonymous silent eyes that lingered and wait ed
and although I might never know the smoky taste of
meat or the dark velvet of wine
my imagination was the witchy benefactor
with the power to transmute this pathetic tableau
into a feast made all the more flavorful
by exhaustion and generosity
and by the secret knowledge of every traveling stranger:
in sharing what we have
we triple our fortune
and in wedding ourselves to our longing
we court the infinite largesse of a fate for which
there are no words
or existing flavors to adequately describe
