When you came home
for the first time like a
thing I might keep, my
father sweat out the
kitchen with a whole ham.

I told him we’d need more.
You have the mouth of a truck.
It feeds four times an hour,
mostly on trap music and
barbecue sauce — whatever’s closer.
Your mother stopped cooking
ages ago.

My father called you a vacuum.

There’s a dream where you’re
eating all my family pictures
off the walls. They angle out
the skin of your belly.

I think it means something
about loving in the wrong ways,
or how hunger is
sometimes a verb.

It’s automatic, you explained
once. You are not thinking
when you grab the last slice
of bread, “This is how I
own a thing” or “This is
how I rend it apart.”

There’s a dream where you’re
eating me alive. Sometimes
I am enough.