I underwent a little spine surgery last Wednesday.
Yes. I’m fine.
Yes. It was a necessary tweaking, offering hope to alleviate pressure and pain on my occipital nerves.
I think of all pain, nerve pain is the worst.
No.
Heart-pain wins.
But this isn’t about pain. This is about hunger.
The day after my tweaking, my youngest son toasted me two slices of rosemary sourdough bread. I taught him how to spread butter—thin and all the way to the crusts. He brewed chai, aerated coconut milk, slowly stirred in creamed honey. I can’t remember a better meal and, within the hour, I heard myself, Is there more?
By 3 pm, I’d devoured the loaf of sourdough and five mugs of chai and still, my belly squealed with wanting.
Before my little tweaking, I’d prepped a couple weeks of dinners. Japanese BBQ meatballs, fried rice, lemon chicken with snow peas, meatloaf and roasted potatoes.
I’m a pescatarian, but my man-cubs, still growing into their skins, are carnivores. Over the years, our meals have shifted—out of piece-it-together based on leftovers and budget and into savory, into recipes curated with time, thought, and blossoming.
By 4 pm, I heard myself, I’m starving. For dinner, we’d planned Udon Noodles with shredded grilled chicken. My son replaced the meat with thinly sliced boiled eggs and avocado for me. I asked for more sesame seeds. Asked for seconds. I might’ve asked for thirds.
I can’t remember the last time my body felt hunger.
That empty and visceral roar, one that rattles the bones.
By Friday, I told my surgeon about my feedings and he said, The body knows, and, It is hard to feel hunger when the body is under assault, continuously navigating deep pain.
If you’ve sat with nerve pain, you know this zapping. It wears you down, grinds your energy and your smile. I never thought of how pain interfered with my appetite. My appetite for life, for food, maybe even for love.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
I thought I was living fairly fully.
I thought wrong.
Four days have passed since my tweaking.
I’ve consumed two books, sixteen new poems, the tub of honey, a bag of soft tortillas with nut-butter and fig jam, a dozen eggs, and a pound of salmon.
This is what I’m willing to catalog.
Despite this filling, I do not feel heavy. I turn my head left without cringing and tearing up. I rest my head on a pillow without the taste of bile, a taste I’d grown so accustomed that I failed to notice.
I sit here with my accommodating keyboard and mouse, a fig & cedar candle dancing.
The sun has yet to rise, the pups are well-fed and already back to sleep, deep in digestion.
California is still burning and fear in our country has traveled beyond our throats, past our voices. There’s a sizzle in our nostrils and I think of the relationship between fear and pain. I think of the way both eradicate desire. I think of how I’m secure in this tiny suburb—a bubble in Idaho—where, in this moment, I am satiated.
Maybe this is about pain after all.
The world’s heart-pain is in need of deep healing.
I know we need more than a tweaking, more than four nerves are in need of attention.
I don’t know what I can do except fill myself with toast and write a poem, share it with you and hope,
hope it matters.
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Thanks for sharing. A world in need of healing words is graced by your voice.
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Thank you for this generous respond and for pausing to sit with my heart and my words.
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