Adjectives of Flavor

I don’t know, maybe I was never really that hungry anyway.

Jalapeno cheesy bread from that woodfired place on third used to haunt me on nights we’d get drunk in the living room. This was after my going out phase.

“I don’t drink to feel alive anymore, I drink to feel dead.”

“Deep.” As you took a long chug of your watery beer.

And I tried to contemplate the ashe of smokey bread on my taste buds. Anything to take away the bitterness of this nasty, nasty beer. Anything to fill the holes of emotion the alcohol can’t seem to reach. Fill it with the chalky sweetness of my mother’s fondant hands, the carbonation of my grandma’s orange, sodapop pool. The ninety nine cent tomato soup cans I ate in my dorm room, the clamour of being alive, dwelling in the hallway outside, as I stared at the gibberish of my calc homework and the poster above my bed, Sublime 40oz. To Freedom. The way the ripped corners scratched my wall from the air of my open window, and the taste of metallic tomato against my cheeks served to inundate me with unforgivable nostalgia, with pain, longing.

Now the longing returns, but in different forms, and I am hungry, but not for anything I’ve chosen, I never choose right. My cracks of feeling are sealed up and glued together by the meat I requested extra tender, the fluffy cake, the savory shrimp, by the adjectives of flavor. I push my plate away and contemplate how I’ve always been full, until now.