YUM | Caito Foster

I couldn’t eat enough to fill myself,
an insatiable void,
and so I go hungry instead
to conserve resources
for the people I love

I’m not hungry anymore
I’ve got no more appetite for
my own suffering today,
I’ve got no tolerance
for the hunger pains,

I can feel them in my brain now,
vacant motel in my gut, flooded
I couldn’t consume enough to
silence the deafening growling,
I can’t tell where it’s coming from,

I tried to starve my ego just in case,
turns out, it doesn’t take a feast
to have us feeling full, in fact
the food is just a facade

I can’t stop eating
anything that tastes like solidarity,
I can’t stop wandering desolate grocery stores
in search of a flavor only found in the
soft palate of a girl I kissed in high school

She doesn’t exist anymore
the sensation on my lips is just an
imagination figment, a fragment,
of a recipe long expired,

I’m not starving for my own
destruction anymore.
My mind would separate and
have me consume myself
down to bare bone, if it could,

Just so you could see
me for what I am,
a skeleton full of closets
coming out slowly,
patience running thinner,
says it’s time for dinner.

Caito Foster is a 26 year old multi-disciplinary artist working predominantly in photography collage and poetry. Caito is the founder and editor of Spit Poet Publishing and their flagship publication and SpitPoetZine, started in Denver Colorado in 2018.

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This poem is from the Thought For Food anthology,
a poetry collection benefiting Denver Food Rescue.
You can purchase a copy of the book here.