graphic by kayleigh wotal
A Feast of Myself
I truly must have been meat to you,
A body you could stare at hungrily until I gave in.
I was easy prey,
Eager to please,
Desperate for any semblance of love.
You made me dinner.
You snapped at my flesh with sharp teeth,
No sign of relent.
You took my draining blood as an invitation
Pinned me down and strung me up.
I was a lamb on a spit.
I spun round and round as your flames lapped my skin.
I crackled and popped.
You shoved an apple in my mouth to keep me quiet.
You rubbed me in honey before shoving the knife in my back.
You knew exactly how to keep me docile and sweet.
When I squirmed, you lined my throat with sugar kisses,
And whispered in my ear,
Distracted me to keep me close.
You guided me right to the slaughterhouse.
There was slack on the lead,
You knew I would follow close.
When I was finally cooked through you sliced off your favorite parts,
Leaving me with just a heart and brain.
You savored the meat you made of me,
Ate slow and forced me to watch.
I turn, powerless to the feast of myself.
A Certain Hunger
Take a short trip through history and you will see no shortage of flashy female psychopaths,
Take a longer trip and you’ll realize it was never their fault.
They were the people I modeled myself after,
Women pushed to the brink.
You will read this and think ill of me,
Typically starvation is the most easily understood reason for cannibalism.
But you see, I was starving.
Everything? in me had been removed, stolen, replaced with hot air.
Everything I had he laid out like glistening brooches on a suit jacket,
Simple accessories to boost only his credibility.
I was sick of being stripped bare and left with only a shadow of myself,
I hardly spoke to my shadow.
You must understand why I did it,
Why I killed him and ate his liver.
It’s surprisingly easy to overcome moral qualms if you give into the appetite,
And I was starving.
I gave him what he wanted,
He felt the hot rush and push of blood and hormones,
Just not the kind he was expecting.
I caressed his flank with my left hand, then I kissed him, looked him in the eye, and slit his throat
with my knife.
I looked at his body pierced like a medieval saint’s,
The air smelled hot and bright with the blood pooling at my feet.
I admired my work,
A ballet mapped out on the human body
My hunger began to fade.
After “A Certain Hunger” by Chelsea G. Summers