Before I knew it

my history had been erased,

I’d been consumed, digested.

I’d been eaten,

mostly by myself as punishment

for not knowing how to free myself.

Yeah,

maybe I am overreacting,

and just need to center more.

I know if I could,

I’d lie back on a boat

on a slow-moving river,

and eat dangling green grapes

from the fingers of an angel,

and years later I’d look back on that

and think all my life

I just wanted to be fed,

I know that much.

But I also know

that’s what all lonely men

in their forties tell themselves

instead of acknowledging

they don’t feel fulfilled,

instead of acknowledging

they don’t feel they’re enough,

and know nothing

can make them feel they are.