satisfied

There is always that moment where you think you got ahead, that silly shock that you were both right and rewarded. You didn't speak out of turn, not loud enough to hear. You didn't pick another wrong horse, bite the wrong raw apple. You aren't about to be tossed from the garden, have no wicked queens to fear so far. There is always that moment where it seems it would be better to be dead than so mistook.

The only things left equal are the ones without anyone making book. The only true justice only falls on the side that you believe is right. It isn't just the altitude that gets to our heads. It isn't only the view or wild beauty that takes our breath away. We lapse into the next most favored sense, lingering always a little longer in the nation of our appetites. So comes the settling sun, the fixed gaze, the habitual wisdoms. These rituals the only rails that hold.

And now the hour of spat out words, that hour of whispered prayer. Hunger so sharp that it is all the etiquette it can muster to devour in bites, not swallows. The desperate entanglements of way and world, the greed of faith, the ache of flesh. That wish that comes true so rare and fine that it breaks the hearts of bones and stars. Away at last from each frail promise, alone and so deep in the machinery that gives out every day. That hint of separation evaporates with all this nuanced hope, and for a moment you are satisfied. You remember the moment for what it was. You know at least hunger is never wrong.