Full Table

Sit back down. The plates are full. They always were. And you reach again. You know exactly how this goes. (you know) You were handed the whole spread before you knew to ask, every course laid out, every fork, every glass. And you are starving at the middle of it, hand out, reaching still, for the one more plate you have already learned will never fill. You tested the punchline. You added the thing. You watched the emptiness sit there and not move a single ring. Full table. (full table) Full table. And you know that it will kill you, slow, the way it kills the rest, the people round the table doing the identical test. But the only way to keep on moving is to stay inside the meal, so you pick the fork back up and chase a thing you cannot feel. Same game. (same game) You walked the long way out and came back to the same game. Born with everything, and somehow needing more, because it is greatness, or the whole life was for nothing, that is the law. Same game. (same game) Same game. It is not the cool of it anymore, the reading of the room, just the slow re-entry, eyes down, walking back into the gloom. You see them all turn round and pick the cycle up again, the gathering, the table, the long quiet line of women and men, and you join it. Not because you forgot the cost, but because the door you found in every exit only led you back across. Greatness or nothing. There is no third plate. You reach. You always reach. You learned it far too late. You said you wanted out. You sat back down. You knew the meal was poison and you swallowed anyway, slow. Reach for the plate. Reach for the plate. It will not help. You already know. So you take your seat among the well-fed and the starved, and you reach for what you cannot eat, the way that you were carved. Full table. Same game. Same game. Reach again. (reach again) Same game.