Poor, White Psychoanalysis

Now I see how like I was to a boiled pudding,

or a bowl of milk toast, sodden lumps of white bread

floating in a tepid broth of scalded milk—

the simple meal an invalid had subsisted on

for years, terrified of change, her tongue

turning inward on difference. I had lived

among my own too long, all of us creatures

in a herd marked by pale hues and thin texture.

So long, I no longer conceptualized difference,

the palette of my dreams scraped down