Alas, the meal is done.  I’ve reached my limit and it is time to stop eating.

Pity it is.  A sad moment that I dreaded would come with each bite, but I ignored the inevitable in favor of flavor.

Now it is time.  There’s no avoiding it. I must face the end.  The meal is done.  Yet, I have no will power, no strength to take action.  I want seconds, or more.  Much more.

The meal was so good, as it always is.  The food so delicious, so soothing and satisfying it’s a shame it is all over.  It meant so much: the act of love that made it, the time, the care of the chef, now all consumed way too soon.

Yet over it is. Time now to stop eating and grieve the end.

Oh dear meal I have loved thee well.  You gave me comfort and nourishment, but now I believe to my depths that you are gone from my life.  Like a fleeting romance, a ship at night that sailed into the horizon, you’ve deserted me for distant shores.  What will I do?  What WILL I DO?  God only knows, and time will surely tell.

I still want but I cannot cry because the food is still with me.  I feel full; the food has not really deserted me.  The meal has become me, truth be told.

I think I have no power to stop, yet I have stopped three times a day for decades upon decades.  How was this possible in the state I’m always in, in the end, grieving the cessation of consumption?  I’m again a hopeless mess with an empty plate.  “Ending just is,” I tell myself; “I am simply on to other things.”  “Run fool!  Leave while the getting is good!”

Like any good religious ritual, like a fine funeral helps lift the soul to God in remembrance, I praise the occasion gone by.  I thank God for the past moment of culinary love and ask to be given the strength to let it go, and just go.

So I do go… yet I secretly know…

The next meal is not far, and I shall slowly savor it as I know it too will end.  Until that hour arrives I am safe, sound and satisfied.  God knows I will be satisfied, truth be told.