share this plate with me dear // it holds

          just enough for the two of us. the kitchen’s run out of meals you see // and this

          is the last of it.

 

          wait, you take // the first bite

  i think you need it more than i.

 

         the cook // she has a way with corn pudding you can

          taste the toil of her // motherly hands empty after her only son

          stopped visiting for the soups.

 

          months, or was it years?

he lay // strung out on rolling heaps of

  

          apathetic garbage and disappeared like a ghost // but that was

          ages ago, and you can still hear him on the days she // works.

          the thought’s enough to destroy my appetite.

i’d better get back to my kitchen.

 

---

 

Joy Overbrook is a writer of poetry and prose, with a particular interest in the brief yet poignant. Her work is published or forthcoming in Train Flash Fiction, Flumes Journal, Story and Grit, and right here in Occulum, among others. For more information, please visit her on Twitter @joy_overbrook