“I have become a soup of myself.”
I have become a soup of myself.
I boiled my bones, skimmed off the fat and
Boiled again. My bones in a bag boiling.
Bones removed and broth gets filled
With vanity and carrots and normalcy,
And a few potatoes.
My stock, foreign root vegetables and some salt.
I become something else, too full of other objects
To really be what used to house my bones.
I was evicted from my body and the meat broke down.
I baked me into pies and sent them to my neighbors
With a handwritten note.
My organs, dark meat and delicacies were dried,
Crushed to dust and jarred away for safekeeping,
Left in a box on a dusty shelf in an attic of lost things
Where recipe books rot away or are eaten.
Just in case some far daughter or son
Might open me up.
The soup that is left is lacking the soul,
The pies and the jars, all apart are less
Than the whole of living in my body.
I found no use for the thing called sense,
Or the cost of myself beyond the commission
That came from the sale.
I serve my soup to the world, with the vegetables,
The salt and the ghost of my bones.
The pies get eaten, the jars gather dust,
And I get my three stars.
