Crumbs

Must I spend my whole life begging

for the crumbs of your affection?

 

I follow you trying to remain

quiet and unnoticed,

 

a person who has become nothing is difficult to grab

with the snares of hatred.

 

My plate is never full,

even when I pile the scraps in the center-

 

a monument to hunger.

 

Each day I awake to the rupturing of my stomach

as it pulls me towards you again and again.

 

A beggar learns that their place is in the aftermath,

once everything that breathes has had their pick.

 

Fulfillment does not come from a half-eaten peach

or the gristle that still clings to a thigh bone.

 

This is a way to make a person into not a person-

to teach them that they deserve the leftovers of another’s desire.

 

Do I not deserve a bounty?

 

A table overflowing and a place setting

with my name on it.