"My mother used to complain that I was a stomach with legs. I still am. My preoccupation and primary hobby is food. I'm not much of a cook, but I am a gourmet eater. I love food-all food. Never met a fruit or vegetable (except perhaps okra) I didn't like. Without question gluttony is my favorite sin and the one I am not yet ready to relinquish. Prison has exacerbated this weakness. If you see me aimlessly staring into space, nibbling on my lower lip, I am deep in a food fantasy.

I have lavishly detailed food fantasies and I have been caught inches from my 5 inch TV screen with my tongue hanging out mesmerized by a glossy food commercial. I have even had fantasies I probably should not share, with a shrink where my tongue unfurls to 20 feet and snatches up some dainty morsel an officer is eating for lunch. Oh to be a frog.

I am not alone in this. All of us have elaborate food fantasies. Some of us are better at imagining than others. I -have a dear friend who has an underdeveloped sense of food fetish. She may as well dream of mush and gruel. I don't like to embark on juicy discussions of mushrooms and steak (T-bone, not some girlie meat like filet mignon. I want to gnaw on a bone.) around her because she will dampen the grill with disgusting musings on cottage cheese and chicken livers. That's not a food fantasy; it's a nightmare. Ice cream and bacon and a cheese tray are fantasies. Cottage cheese and chicken livers are things they probably feed to people in segregation.

Secretly I do have some unconventional food fantasies, but unlike my intrepid friend who insists on the sublime joys of chicken liver, -I have the sense to keep my unique tastes to myself. My secret hankering is for swedes or as they are called here, rutabaga. And turnips. And parsnips. Salsify and Jerusalem artichokes. Old fashioned peasant food. Roots. I long for roots.

I dream of them mashed with slabs of butter, sprinkled with nutmeg. Or creamed. I can imagine growing them (along with leeks and beets and peas, fennel and garlic) and pulling them from the earth. They smell so sweet and taste clean and nutty. Delicious.

Nonetheless, I realize that statements such as, 'Man, I hunger for some parsnips' (You can French fry them like potatoes-heavenly), contravenes fantasy law. Parsnip just doesn't connote bliss in the way that cheese generates excitement. Think of . it-cheese-blues, cheddars, soft, moist gooey cheeses. Hard and crumbly and holey. Then there are the cream cheeses. I imagine the breads and pastries. Donuts are like chocolate and licorice: perfect foods.

Let's not forget plain old cereal. A bowl of cereal and some milk. Oh, and toast. Toast and marmalade. Coddled eggs. Fried bread and marmalade. Rhubarb crumble. Gooseberry fool... I am lost to my reverie.

Many years ago when I was a teenager and ravenous all the time, I was thrown out of an all-you-can-eat breakfast bar. The maitre d' and attending waiters were convinced I was stashing food on my person. Nowadays in the chow hall, I'm still beleaguered by that question, 'Where do you put it all?' Except nowadays instead of being put out of the dining room, I am searched for stolen state food.

I used to laugh about my bottomless pit of a body, but recently I have stopped laughing because I have discovered that the bottomless pit is in fact filling up with overindulgence. Just as our landfills, those seemingly inexhaustible empty spaces have become exhausted and have over-spilled. I have discovered pouches, saddlebags and love handles. Pockets of extra me that don't break down under exercise. I have more curves than when I started and all in the wrong places. All that exercise seems to have made my fat cells strong and perky. My muscles are trim and my fat is large.

I have a new food fantasy to cope with this unpleasant reality. When I dream my dreams of gigantic feast and delicious delectables, I close my eyes and envision a lean mean eating machine. It's not unlike the fantasy most of us happily support that our planetary body will sustain our abuse indefinitely. We eat with our eyes closed." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, August 25, 2005)

Elizabeth Haysom is incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy. Her essays are indexed at Glimpses from Inside.