Either you’ve died, or you arrive
beside me at a funeral
patchily reaching out
from your zero gravity chair
to grab the relative achievement
of my stomach.
There is no cute life in me
but I have eaten a great meal
alone successfully, greater
than I have ever kept down before,
full of iron and clotted cream.
I cannot feel everything about you
anymore the way I used to—
the stomach overfills itself so fast
it eats the hunger and the mouth.
I grow enamored of you as an egg
you shake in my direction
then love you evenly, without belief.
Copyright © 2017 by Elizabeth Metzger. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 17, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.