Seeking Common Cause

It’s uncomfortable 
some mornings
to be alive and hurting
with a broken belly full
of unloved 
but necessary
food.

If this is healthy eating,
give me a gut full of air
and call me ungrateful 
for my privilege and 
relative ease.  
Tell me again

how many go hungry,
tell me again
how my own illness
is self-inflicted,
tell me how glad
I should feel right now
to be alive and here
in this body,

and I will tell you
that shame and guilt
for feeling such anguish
when I should be above it all
are fueling
what’s inside

where pain’s pain,
death’s death, and 
all I want to do
is make a swift
common cause
with the worms
who do not care
who any of us are
as long as
soon enough,

we are theirs.