The Stomach Remembers What the Mind Forgot
The stomach remembers what the mind forgot,
the exact heat of the parking lot
behind the rib joint where the smoke hung low
and thick as winter fog twenty years ago,
the stomach keeps a record that the brain can’t touch,
the muscle memory of too much and too much
and too much again, the body’s filing clerk
sorting every meal into the murk
of what I’ve carried with me all this time.
The stomach remembers every pantomime
of fullness I’ve performed, the loosened pants,
the walk around the block, the second chance
I gave myself before the second plate,
the stomach remembers and it doesn’t conflate
the good meals with the desperate ones, it knows
the difference between the feast and what arose
from loneliness, from boredom, from the need,
the stomach catalogues each specific feed.
The stomach remembers what the mind forgot,
every booth, every counter, every parking lot,
every 2 AM salvation from the cold,
the stomach remembers, getting old
is just the inventory growing long,
the stomach remembers every song
I’ve hummed while cooking, every late-night drive,
the stomach remembers I’m alive
because I fed it, fed it, never stopped,
the stomach remembers every crop
I’ve harvested from every table set,
the stomach remembers, won’t forget.
The mind moves on but the stomach holds the proof,
the scar tissue telling the truth
of every excess, every binge, every swear
I made to quit and didn’t, every prayer
I sent to no one while the grease congealed,
the stomach is the document, the sealed
and notarized account of who I’ve been,
the stomach remembers, thick and thin,
the stomach remembers — it was there for all of it,
the unimpeachable, reliable witness to the spit
and fire of the grill, the pot, the pan,
the stomach remembers the entire span
of this consuming life, the full report,
the stomach remembers every single sort
of hunger I’ve invented just to eat,
the stomach remembers the defeat
and the victory were always the same bite,
the stomach remembers through the night.