The plates full, the mouths drool. Colorful plates, painted with pretty lettuces, wheat products decked in various forms of dairy. The mouth rejoices. The souls rejoice because full stomachs, fill hearts. The laughter crescendos as tasty morsels are masticated to mush releasing pleasure to the brain. Standing from afar, imagining the flavors and textures. Wishing that I didn’t have to be such a freak standing from afar, lost in my thoughts because it is the only part of me that works, my mind. It’s in the remembrance that the discomfort blooms. It’s in the desire to forget what it is to be satiated. It’s in the loneliness and isolation that the sorrow permeates every hole bored by loss. The sounds of cozy conversation interrupted by the rumble of hunger and tumultuous and inflamed intestines. And I try to remember how lucky I am to be right here. I stand before a glass window watching the living live, knocking at the window, hands pressing against glass, mouth pressing against the glass, panting, clawing, pounding, breaking the glass. The bleeding reminding me that I too am alive still. That I have not yet died. That I can yet live but with a redefined existence that can somehow find joy without all the creature comforts that have made me human thus far. By dying to old ways of thinking and behaving. By transcending this reality and reaching into the next. Maybe the living aren’t living at all, but in a trance, and I have been rudely awakened through the pain and suffering. My plate is empty. There is no meal for which to rejoice. There are only tears, and each one is an awakening. Each one is a revelation. Each one a portal to God, to full understanding. Because the person who finds contentment in bitter suffering, is the person who has grasped eternity.