Autobiography of My Hungers

     His beard: an avalanche of honey

          an avalanche
 

of  thorns. In a bar too close to the Pacific,
 

                            he said, “I don’t love you,
 

               but not because I
 

couldn’t be attracted to you.” Liar—
 

                                     even my soul
 

is potbellied. Thinness,
 

         in my mind, equals the gay men
 

                                      on the nightly news.
 

        Kissed by death & public scorn.
 

The anchorman declaring,
 

                             “Weight loss is one
 

        of the first symptoms.” The Portuguese
 

have a word for imaginary, never-
 

                   to-be-experienced love.
 

                                      Whoop-de-doo.
 

        “I don’t love you,” he said.
 

The words flung him back—
 

                            in his eyes, I saw it—
 

         to another bar
 

where a woman sidestepped his desire.
 

                  Another hunger.
 

                                    Our friendship.
 

In tenth grade, weeks after
 

                             my first kiss, my mother
 

said, “You’re looking thinner.”
 

         That evening, I smuggled a cake
 

                                      into my room.
 

I ate it with my hands,
 

                   licked buttercream off
 

                            my thumbs until I puked.
 

         Desire with no future,
 

bitter longing—
 

                   I starve myself  by yearning
 

          for intimacy that doesn’t
 

                                        & won’t exist.
 

Holding hands on a ferry. Tracing,
 

                   with the tip of my tongue,
 

a  jawline. In a bar too close
 

                                to the Pacific, he said,
 

“I don’t love you, but not
 

          because I couldn’t be attracted to you.”
 

                                    His beard:
 

an avalanche of thorns,
 

                  an avalanche of honey.