Food Trays

Food Trays

Our fingernails are grimy crescent moons, public restrooms are often so busy.
You want to hide that we are trying to bathe there.
For a week, you fed me spoonfuls of chicken broth,
the fever an insistent voice, the sky a white sheet,
who wouldn't want to sleep on a white sheet.
Instead we slept on snail trailed, needle pock holed mattress,
insect eggs a map of the holy land.
There was one crusade of children,
most of them died or were sold, bartered into slavery.
We won’t go there because we both remember what that means.
But I remember a spoon entering my mouth, tinny saltiness.
You said I raved but I don't remember what I said
except I wanted to hear the Blue Oyster Cult's "Astronomy".
I stole food, trays left behind on the plush green grass, I would simply pick them up,
then enter as though I belonged and I would feast. I fed you stolen peanut butter sandwiches.
I wrapped them in paper napkins then I shoved them into my backpack cowering beneath the table.
We were scavengers, carrion crow even though we were once told that we were intelligent.