To save myself I hid in a cave of my own making sealed behind avalanched silence.  It was impregnable, but for hunger, which never gave up. First hunger ate my stores and when my entire supply of food was gone, it fingered for more. It scratched about for any crawling thing, ate even what was hanging in spider-webs, long dead, until even they were gone. At last completely alone, my hunger realised I still had life. Hunger began to nibble wildly at my shrinking self. No scrap escaped its attention. In some places I am already cleaned to bone. I have not saved myself by saving myself. I have become hunger’s meal.

I do not complain. I believe hunger, skilful and neat,  will outlast me and when I am completely finished, my hunger, still not satisfied,  will eat even a crack of light, a slice of  rock, any opening.

Poem by Jo Mariner (in reaction to Baudelaire’s prose poem “Cake”, Paris Spleen: little poems in prose , translated by Keith Waldrop, Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut).

photo credit: Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash