feast

fucking someone who is well-liked & highly desired—when i’m nothing more than a flap jacket trapdoor, screeching “why?” every time the wind blows through—is like feasting on my own heart. i devour. & people hide in me & i can’t look you in the eye when you compliment my work. tell me you want to drink wine from my collarbone & shove the jawbreaker in my open mouth. gag me so i can stop spewing & there can be peace on earth for fifteen minutes or however long it takes this sugar bulb to dissolve & drip down my throat or however long it takes you to do the same. say my name. no, not that one. the other one. the one the boy who hypnotized me gave me. honeydew riptide remember when i walked in on her on top of him & everything just felt too silly, too surreal just like when she walked into the same subway car as us & caught me red handed in a lie i never should have told? what are the odds? no, seriously. run the statistics for me please. & i remember smoking cigarettes on the pavement like we’d live forever though all i wanted was to die. or lie beneath you. riding bikes in the mountains & sitting under the stars with the irish boy on his first night. twenty. the sky was so big. i was too. & no one thought i would jump. but i did. i did jump. i did. i doused myself in falling water & made an ode to the everlasting. the invincibility of youth was never an image i bought into. but i was fifteen in the passenger’s seat once too, infinite, alive. i was alive. & she wasn’t. & i owed it to her even though all i ever did for her was pass her gum in homeroom every morning. i owed her to love as many moments as i could. to kiss the scars on my best friend’s thighs in the macy’s dressing room. to sword fight in the toy aisle. to play hide & seek in the grocery store & kiss a boy who did not belong to me on my sixteenth birthday. to make it to my sixteenth birthday. & my seventeenth. & all the subsequent dividends. i remember skinny dipping with your sister & friends while you slept in the sand on our third date. & dancing on the roof in the rain on memorial day. roller coasters. white water rafting. telling you i loved you at a rave with my nipples out for everyone to see. how you weighed the options & decided to lie straight back to me. i took it. i still miss his meatballs. that’s not a euphemism, he really made great meatballs. & i pretended he rolled love in with veal & spices. because i’ve come to associate food with love & how could there be deceit ground up & fed to my still open mouth, the way she held me open & shoved in the brioche, keeping me plump like the hansel & gretel witch? they found me guilty, you know, at the fourth grade mock trial. even the young see no innocence in youth. how did i get here from where i started? the maze only makes sense to me but i still don’t know the next turn. i have given so much love. i have felt so much joy. i have been touched by so much talent, so much intrigue, & curiosity. spit in my mouth. it still tastes like maharaja chai oolong & broken down cars on the freeway. still tastes like stuffed crust, extra cheese, & bacon. like papaya salad & virgin pina coladas. like food is love & love is food & both are life & life goes on & there’s always another one stealing my heart & stealing my breath & calling me pretty & eating me like the kiwi eats me back, rips the buds from my tongue, claws up the roof of my mouth. i leave the fuzz on. that’s not a euphemism either, i eat the skin of the kiwi. & i still touch myself with your hands & i still drink strawberry milk to taste your lips again. but life goes on. the birthdays passed. she’s still gone. & so is he. & so are you. & i’m still feasting on what’s left.