Ravenous
By Angela Narciso Torres

Your eyes are bigger than your mouth,
Mother said when I left rice
on my plate, star-apples
clutched in each hand. I spit
black seeds between bites.
Always there was more to try,  
try again. With my eyes
I swallowed the world—birds
alighting on a wire, blue flutter
of a shirt, a topaz ring and the way
someone twirled it before she died.
O hoarder of light, keeper of
backyards and nights, somewhere
a tree is burning, somewhere a child,
his village buried in ash, is weeping.
His eyes, two verdigris moons
grown too large for his belly.
Brother, we are born to crave
what we cannot keep.

© Angela Narciso Torres