And so I learned to devour my lovers the way my grandmother taught me to eat my eggs. It was my first year at university, money was tight for the whole family. 

“Sometimes, in the mawrning, you eat one egg, instead of two. You have half a bagel, instead of a whoal.” The rhythmic bounces in her voice would cut through the sizzle of oil in her frying pan. Savouring her own words the way she would suck strands from a mango pit.

Being the first generation of Canadian-born Lucians, in my family, food was the only thing tying me back to our Laborie roots. My mother migrated at the age of 13, lost her accent, her language and her know-how of rising dough twice before splitting it into palm-sized discs. My mother didn’t know how to mix the cinnamon and brown sugar to fry the bakes just right. Hers always came out too rough, too small. 

Oma, my grandmother, sent for my mother — paying $268 for a one-bedroom in downtown Ottawa. Oma then called for her son a few years later and, when he arrived, she had a belly full of Dana, her last child. Throughout my own growth, my mother worked endless hours, mimicking her parents. If we weren’t snacking on three weeks’ worth of frozen spaghetti sauce, it would be Oma dropping off our meals. Bouillon in two Pyrex dishes, with orange tape on the top to denote whom the bowl belonged to. Too many times had she lost her pots and pans to the kitchens of others. After nourishing her kin the least they could do was return the vessel. “The lack of broughtupcy with these people,” she would growl. “I’m not asking for a meal in return, just my bowls.” Oma often handed over stewed red snapper, cucumber salad, and tin foil wrapped breadfruit, steaming. She would warn, “Only eat your share, Sierra must eat just as much as you, and Mom needs food after work, too.” 

I often failed to meet her conditions. I would dive into my Mom’s portion across the dinner table. By nightfall, I would be hunched over the freezer or halfway lost in the fridge, eating handfuls of cheese by where the block would snap at the bend of my hands. I’d make giant bowls of rotini pasta, smothered in olive oil, garlic, thyme, and parmesan, all in silence. Our snacks for the week would disappear, the granola and chocolate chip rolled soft bars would vanish, as would peanut butter chewies dipped in chocolate. There was guilt in tearing through cardboard boxes of snacks that had no ties to my family. Eating food from the factories of this new land kept my mouth at a remove from Lucian tradition. Cereal would go down dry and by the morning it hurt to roll out of bed.

It was in these moments that we were supposed to have learned how to ration, to sacrifice just enough to continue without satisfaction. I would thumb at the fish, sectioning off even pieces waiting for Mom to come home with my sister after dance rehearsals. Being broke made a constricting romantic out of me. Without knowing, my grandmother had created an environment of scarcity. She wasn’t wrong to do so. I learned to suck each bone dry, to spin fish eyes around my tongue, to swallow its brains whole, sometimes crunch at the gills if Oma had forgotten to clean them out. I would take whatever I could get. I didn’t have the right or the means to ask otherwise, and certainly not to ask for something different.

I learned to devour my lovers the same way my Oma taught me to eat a mango. All the way through, leaving nothing behind. I was taught to tear apart and mine the things that we did have, so as to not seek a need elsewhere. Tearing the gummy ligaments, pink peach and orange strands raked by teeth from its core. I was never good at rationing our meals, or dividing portions. More often than not, at family gatherings I stole forkfuls from the plates of others. Figuring their food tasted better than mine, or perhaps my portion would fill me differently on their flatware.

Confusion would set in. How was I meant to savour my meals and devour them at the same time? Oma had taught me that to consume with abandon was bound to immoralities of this new land she found her family bound to. Within my grandmother’s logic existed this poetic inconsistency that insufficient meals eaten with the right intentions would fill us regardless of a portion’s lack. To waste the fruit on a mango seed, or the meat on the wing of a small hen was blasphemous; as was crawling into the arms of others to steal their last piece of plantain.

“Your plate should give you awll you should ever need.” 

This thin line of eating the right amount in the right way boiled over into my relationships. I would make a lover out to be all I could ever need. I sucked at their fingers as if they were full of every nutrient. I loved as though my partners had everything to give. I stripped them of their time for their own families and gnawed at their boundaries. I believed them to be all I should ever desire, I looked to them for time and love that we should have been able to share with friends and ourselves. 

Papa, Oma’s second husband, made the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever eaten. When we lived with them for a year, after my parents’ divorce, I used to get up early and make myself an omelette. I would clean the plates, the forks, the pans, and then wait. Papa would come down after everybody and ask me: 

“You want Papa to make you eggs Nonos?” His drawl copied Oma’s, except his words unravelled as if trapped in molasses. 

“Yes Papa, please.”

This went on until Oma found out I had been tearing through her stores. She unleashed a shredded foray of patois in my direction. I became afraid of eating in front of others. Often eating too much, too severely, foolishly in front of those who wouldn’t dare to do the same. I hid my binges in shadows with television light cascading over my salt-crusted fingers. My love would exist in the same way. My partners were mysteries to my family.  I was afraid of devouring the wrong kind of person. Like my late-night consumption, these lovers had no connection to my family, to their vacated island homes. I would be lost loving people who came from a land they had yet to understand, people who were produced by ahistorical clans.  So many of my Aunts and Uncles married vetted members of other Lucian families. They were the cousins of “so-and-so” who came from “there-and-there.”

My family’s marriages resembled the boneyards on our plates. Partners butchered each other, and fed on each other, down to the marrow. We loved how we ate: intensely and gratefully, but not knowing how much more we could get, if this would be the last. I loved this way until I moved to Toronto. My partner at the time was finishing college in our hometown of Ottawa. I was withering away in a new city. I cut back on eggs and bread, for as long as my mother footed the bill. 

I held out on love every other week until my partner, Maya, would come visit. We would grocery shop together and I would get $19 olive oil and Gran Padano to offset the three bags of $2 Mackerel from PAT. I would cook an entangled meal of Lucian fried fish, orzo salads, and tofu sides with a bowl of sticky rice. 

We would eat our food in huffs and leave oil and kimchi-stained bowls behind. We would fill each other with the softness of our sides and the hot pink pressures flowing through our lips.  When it was time for them to go, I would be able to discern the amount of love dispensed by the bowls in my sink, and the sweat stains that I could thumb at on my bed. 

The binging didn’t stop until I was able to buy my own food, eat it in my own home without anyone telling me to save some for later. I started overindulging on intimacy, but not the kind my family lost homes over. Not the kind of love my uncles split backyard pools over, or time with their children. Not the kind of intimacy my aunts became alienated from our barbecues over.  All my lovers knew of each other, sometimes they wanted to meet each other. 

I was introduced to polyamory by Emm. But they brought their idea to me in the same way Oma brought meals: one day at a time. I wanted to know the ins and outs all the way through, butcher their framework like stealing gills from the cheeks of a snapper. Scarcity bred an intensity that I eventually grew out of. Not because my financial situation had vastly changed but because the control over rationing had shifted. Polyamory was brought to me in divided pyrex dishes with Emm. Through a false idea of abundance, I was handed scraps of time, emotional leftovers. When given consumptive boundaries I often overindulged, fearing when I would be given more time, more nourishment. They hadn’t told me their polyamory held little space for my kind of consumption. No longer did I want to love with a voracious appetite. I balance, a slow and methodical love with intense desire, the same way cleaning a fish and marinating it for frying takes at least three days. They loved like how I used to eat. All at once and all the way, with too many days in between.

My Oma only tells me how to cut the golden Crisco into cubes for my flour now, how long to let the dough rise before splitting it into eight parts. She ships me pickleback in bulk now, she begins to tell me to freeze half and cook the rest but stops. She no longer asks me about potential partners, if she did I would have to tell her about M and V and Cèd. How I cook all of them spreads of meals and rarely save enough for tomorrow. We leave meat on some of the bones, I stopped eating the brains in my fish, and started making a different meal if I was still hungry with no remorse. If I wanted more of a lover I asked for their time, or found it in others. I was no longer met with misshapen rules that held no space for my desire. With Emm, with my grandmother’s meals, to ask for more of them was to slight their capacity to give. I was no longer consuming only for survival, hoping to be filled by fleeting touches and insufficient dishes. I was prioritizing pleasure. This is not to dismiss or condemn the acts of survival my family had to set along my path in order for me to grow in the way I have. But it is to say that eating, loving, and living in scarcity can rarely hold health, joy, and desire all in the same space. In broad daylight, I let lovers leave me when they saw fit. My grip isn’t any less intentional, simply kinder and aware of when we’re making each other sick and not full.  

And so i learned to devour my lovers the way my grandmother told me to eat my eggs

one at a time when i really wanted two 

spared salt when i wanted to clog myself full 

being broke made a constricting romantic out of me 

Taking them by toes then shin then calf 

never knowing where my next meal would come from 

doubling back for leftovers until the pot was empty 

scraping them from the sides of my bowl when 

often i wished to pass them along to someone else 

or spread three spoons around the table and say thanks 

People would guard their plates because i was hurdling into theirs 

or liked the way my serving tasted on their flatware 

It was all the same in the gut though 

Muddled and messy and inseverable once consumed 

Irremediable

Did you enjoy how i spun my fork around my tongue 

before bending all 4 of its legs back on its spine 

Often i would crink the middle of the spoon and play bind it with elastic bands 

Chewing on things i cant swallow

Knowing often the stomach is tricked just by taste and then replace the soluble content with gum 

And just roll it around till it was sucked dry collapsing between molars.