Ersatz

The way that the caramel replacement in a protein bar

Sticks to your fingers. Only meal in your workday, hunger lingers.

That airy bite of a low-cal snack might just be enough –

I can almost forget that it’s ersatz.

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Processes wasting food, a diet that no longer sustains you,

The unhappiness growing within you the only thing fed.

The sugar from the soda was grown with slave labour

Then shipped, and the nutrition removed.

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The way I make choices that contain nothing, empty and neat,

Diet Coke, caffeine free. Decaf, non-fat milk, vanilla sweet.

The only way I can enjoy such transportable feasts

Is to relish the flavour of air that I‘ll eat.

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I know my dress size. I know hers. I know how I look to the world.

But before I even thought about that, the cost of ageing,

Before I knew the womanly wiles I ought to possess,

I knew the joy of ersatz.