Pushed away: Vanilla (I)

It shrinks its own portion in advance, of food, of comfort, of attention, and presents the shrinking as modesty rather than as the flinch it is. Beneath it lies a household that made ordinary wanting faintly ridiculous, so going without became the only available form of dignity. What it asks for is to take a normal share once, in plain view, and discover that nothing is said.

I take the smallest piece before anyone has to offer it to me.

It echoes Ye Xian, the girl of the old Chinese tale who was kept in rags and fed on leavings until she took the leavings for her true measure. The form implies a task: to test that measure against something other than the household that set it.