Swallow the world whole.
Teeth marks on everything I’ve touched.
Bit down too hard, bit down too much.
Swallow the world whole.
Jaw unhitched like a snake in the weeds.
Nothing fits but everything feeds.
I ate the evening and I ate the dark.
I ate the silence in the parking lot, the spark
of somebody’s headlights pulling in,
I ate the distance and the origin
of every craving that I couldn’t kill,
I ate the wanting and I’m wanting still.
Swallow the world whole.
Fork and knife abandoned for the fist.
Everything I’ve swallowed, everything I’ve missed.
The emptiness is not the absence of the full.
The emptiness is what’s behind the pull,
the thing that drives the hand back to the plate,
the thing that keeps the kitchen running late,
the thing that wakes me up at 2 AM
to stand before the fridge and start again,
the swallowing that never fills the space,
the world goes down but nothing takes its place.