Satisfying

I’m not built to be loved as an intact whole. I’m bred to be eaten by others. To nourish. To drain and leave a torn seam that becomes a fashion statement. Buy me for $77! I’m trendy. Once I go out of commission you’ll never find another like me on the shelves of your local retail market. I’m such an acquired taste yet you deign to purchase me anyways; I’m created to pine and feel the conditional joy of desire. Too long to belong. To have my digits snapped off and eaten like sugar snap peas sweating in the dead of summer. Harvested from the vine or fresh from the plastic bag. Can your pampered taste buds even tell the difference? I can’t tell by your noises. Are you choking or laughing? Is my warm blood scalding your throat? I run hot, that’s all. The way you keep wolfing me down and begging for more through gritted teeth is confusing, that’s all. You can see my life through a fish-eyed lens with every mouthful; see others experiencing but never owning. Symmetry through cinematography, artificially laid across the screen to a fictional viewer. Tell me at least, do my bones taste sweet? Is my marrow the flavor that you’ve been craving? Does it taste so sickly sugary, lingering on your tongue like a forgotten word? Please tell me when it comes to you—anything leaving your mouth and entering my ears is reminiscent of a poor man finding religion. Is sucking it out of my being like drinking ambrosia out of God’s well? Do you care if it is? Is your God praising you now? Do you know the difference? Mummers farce or Shakespearean tragedy? Please snap another digit before you make your final decision. Chew a fingernail absently like cud until it is soft and pliable. Tear my hair and worm it between each gapped tooth with your tongue that can so aptly soothe my struggle to get away from you with a single absent word muttered so deliberately between licks. It’s like candy floss if you think hard enough. Don’t mind the burnt taste, I dyed my hair once more to try and feel whole again. Please please please take another helping of me. It’ll give my life meaning if I brought you joy for even a moment. If I silenced the rumbling of your stomach, it would make the years of growing to this size mean something. I’m bred for this just like the finest livestock. I even matured a little faster than the wild, untouched creatures of forgotten human memory. I’m privileged and grass-fed, you won’t taste the deviation. Don’t worry, everything will grow back and you can keep harvesting to your heart’s content. Oh, my heart? Don’t worry about it, you already know I’ve dressed it for you. Oh, the brain? You ate it for breakfast so you could learn a new way to see the world. Don’t worry, it’ll be back in the morning with something new to report. So how about it? Do I taste good? Do I finally satisfy you? Oh, it’s okay. I’ll regrow my liver tomorrow, you already had it today. I’m sorry it wasn’t pleasurable enough to remember. I’m chained to a rock so I can’t escape, so don’t worry about my absence in the morning. I’ll be waiting patiently for you. I could never leave you. I love you too much to deny myself this one joy. Oh, Love? Do I know how to love beyond knowing how to please? Regardless, I’ll be waiting here untouched and perfect for you and only you. No no, those teeth marks are yours, never mind the missing canine tooth. What are you looking at me like that for? Go on, take another bite. It’ll be like you were never here when you’ve finished your meal, I know how you hate evidence. I’ve worked so hard and cleaned up so diligently. So dutifully. My cells will regrow for the next. The skin you’ll never stroke with an index finger to trace my moles scattered across my skin like black holes, threatening to swallow you whole and leave nothing but a wail that sounds like the trade winds that promise a different life offshore. A drunken tattoo you’ll never redraw and lament upon my imperfections to disregard your own. I’m too bitter, I’m too quiet now, I’m not kind anymore. You left me on the countertop to rot. I’ll make you ill now—I’m sorry I’m spoiled. I was nice and nice and compliant and totally at room temperature once. Now I’m shallow and icy and I can’t let anyone in—my flesh doesn’t permit teeth besides yours, I promise you. Just the thawing lap of sandpaper tongues to whittle me away. You’ll never toy with the metal lodged through my skin. You’ll complain that it makes me harder to digest. You will recoil and claim I’m trying to trick and choke you—press a bullet into your skull as you sleep. I already seem to try as you lay next to me, but I’m not strong enough—my strength to leave has fled my body with my lifeblood. And by the way, yesterday I—

Oh, are you done already? Do you want a napkin? Toothpick? Some of me is stuck in your teeth, that’s all. I‘m sorry I mentioned it, you’re perfect even with parts of me trickling down onto the dirty floor. The crimson highlights your beauty like the finest blush of dried roses gifted to you in praise, thorns intact. Oh, Love, okay, call me tomorrow. I’m here to provide and only to please. I am yours after all. I promise I won’t disappoint you tomorrow. I’ll change the recipe. I won’t disappoint you again. Come back tomorrow. Be here tomorrow.

I want to be needed because I am not enough without sacrifice. I want to be needed. I want to sacrifice. I’m not enough without it. Let me feed you. It’s all I have anymore. Give me back this one thing.