Eat your vegetables, Mother tells me.
You need to grow up big and strong,
so you'd better eat them.
Doesn't she see?
They're alive.
She wants me to crush them up,
shove them down my throat
Chew, gulp, swallow.

Doesn't she understand?
Why won't she understand?
Maybe I don't want to be big and strong.
Maybe they just want to continue
developing.
But she wrenches them out,
she forces them into the light
and she makes me consume them.

Eat them, eat them, eat them.
Big and strong, big and strong.
Why does everyone say that?
Isn't it all a lie?
She doesn't want me to eat them
because they make me big and strong.
She wants me to eat them
because she has to.

I've seen it time and time again.
Grandma did it to Mother.
Great grandma did it to Grandma.
Will it be my duty
to do it to my kids?
Filling their cheeks
and covering their mouths?
Censoring?

No.
I can't.
The vegetables
deserve to have their way.
They've been enslaved so long.
They've been enslaved for long enough.

The vegetables, they eat me.
They devour me whole.

Maybe I should've just eaten them.
Maybe I should've listened to
everyone else.

I should've eaten the vegetables.