until my stomach lining shreds

She's readying the first course and I'm clacking together spoons. The best and brightest is trapping steam in pots; lifting and releasing, lifting and releasing. The smells she unleashes are special, rarefied, lone plants springing up in blighted places. I bite at the air and it shocks me like currents from a wire that's shed its casing.

My taste buds are leaky. I'm so hungry.

I feel like a dog whose ribs are showing.

But it's not me who is canid. It's her; of mange and scrawn, of domestic stink and rueful slowness.

Her.

My paunch is saggy with hunger. I want grist and grain, tubers, jugs filled with the stuff of wine. I demand it. I'm a demon of wants, a tyrant of needs, an apostle of must haves.

What's taking her so long? Are her brains big enough to construct torture like this? Can her heart expand enough to safeguard it?

Now I'm beginning the doubt my own doubt. These must be the beginning stages of delirium. Surely.

I'll pile course on course, of course, of course. Won't stop until my stomach lining shreds.

I'm ready to snarl.

I say: "Do airplane! Make zoom-zoom. Mmm. And mmmm."

Once more, I bite the air, snapping at it. A new dagger of white tooth slices the ridge of bare gum below it. There is blood.

My spoons clack.

I will not be brought to tears.