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No Suppers
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Vignettes No suppers anymore. The desire to taste eclipsed by the drudgery it took to procure edibles and prepare even the simplest meal, her favored foods dwindling to the few her body could tolerate. No hunger gnaws her belly. She considers this a victory.
Flashback, decades foregone, a Moroccan restaurant in downtown DC, a nondescript orange brick building with no sign. Who would know the treasure within, time-travel beyond the entry portico, hospitality served with grand flourish. No menu, a dozen courses, each one more delicious than the last. Delicate demitasse tumblers ornamented in golden filigree, brimful of warm milk sprinkled with cardamom... sterling pots of honeyed mint tea poured steaming into colorfully etched glasses... and the wine, wine, more wine, rich red perfectly palate cleansing, the imbibement of which bestowed cheer that never spilled over into drunkenness. A communal dining experience where strangers became friends over silver platters piled high with couscous, currants & cashews, exotic viands wrapped in flaky pastry, unidentifiable vegetables braised in spicy sauces sopped with bits of crusty bread, fresh figs, dates, walnuts drizzled in saffron syrup laced with crushed pistachios, all eaten with bare hands. Licking their fingers with hedonistic glee, falling back into piles of brocade pillows, they whispered lusty secrets which would soon be forgotten, drifting sated until the next ambrosial dish arrived. For 20 bucks one could eat & drink well into the night.
She marvels that she ever ate so much food, now a single orange fills her for days. The cupboards slowly emptied until the last morsel had been consumed, after that she never craved again, but to the contrary was invigorated by the absence of food in her system. She contemplated the allegory of Adam & Eve & The Apple wondering if perhaps humans had gone off-script when they started eating solid food. Maybe we were meant to live purely on Divine Love and nothing else. Considering all the back-breaking, pains-taking effort required to maintain a food industry - seeding n sowing, growing, harvesting, birthing & butchering, processing, packaging, transportation, preparation, acquisition - not to mention all the dis-ease and maladies that are resultant by the consumption of food. So much toil for what will eventually be flushed down the toilet.
Occasionally a piece of fruit shows itself on the kitchen counter, or a bowl of rice, once a jar of peanut butter. Though not hungry she eats anyway assuming that is the purpose of the provisions arrival. She knows now that nutrition is a lie, by all rational accounts she should be dead or ill or weak or tired or whatever those who contrive explanations to sell remedies will say to convince others of deficiency, scarcity, lack. Really it's just collective neediness puppeteered by Gluttony.
