1839: Lessons in Hunger | Anne Sexton
"Lessons in Hunger"
Anne Sexton
“Do you like me?”
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence feel off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
but blackness filled my ears,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What’s a question like that?
What’s a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,/I swear by the miracle-working icon,/And by the fire and smoke of our nights:/I will never come back to you.
Anne Sexton
“Do you like me?”
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence feel off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
but blackness filled my ears,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What’s a question like that?
What’s a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,/I swear by the miracle-working icon,/And by the fire and smoke of our nights:/I will never come back to you.