I Consume Myself Slowly

A Belly Full of Sugar, A Chest Full of Nothing

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i could say i don’t care about love. but i do. i care about it more than i should. i care about it more than what i eat, or what i wear, how my hair looks in the morning or what i look like without makeup on. i’m always willing to cross oceans for it. i’m willing to walk across coals for a taste of it. is that what happened to me? did i have to walk across coals to get a little bit of it when i was little? i wish i could say i don’t remember, but i do. i remember everything.

i miss the smell of someone safe. there’s a dust that settles around you when your shoulders are allowed to drop. when someone gives you permission to stop sending ravens into the sky for help. when their wings can settle and my ink can go dry.

i’ve built cathedrals inside of a man i can’t pray to, with a thousand empty pews and a cross i promised i’d carry. the devil is the desire to be loved and god won’t answer my ravens.

please give me something. please tell me i’m worth it. someone kiss the back of my hands and tell them they’re made for something besides holding the world like it’s going to leave me. like i’m holding the entire thing between my palms and all i can do is watch it seep through my fingers, trying to escape me like everything else. so i kiss it instead, hoping i can be a part of it. maybe i can love it into reciprocation. even just a little bit. but i don’t think it knows i’m here. i search the streets and they are empty.

people look at me like a wound instead of the scar. i crawled out of the hole they threw me in, but they still talk to the dirt instead of me. sometimes i crawl back inside because it’s easier to return to a hole you know than a light you don’t trust. i think i’m scared to reach my hand out and feel the sun upon my skin. afraid someone is going to cut it off the second it touches the sky instead of kissing it and telling me it’s made for something.

i speak with a sinner’s tongue when it’s really love i have a taste for. my heart grumbles at the longing and i don’t know how something can be so full and empty at the same time. my mouth is dry and my plate is empty, i consume myself slowly, in hopes i’ll have some left for the same love i’d cross oceans for.

what is life without it? can a sinner still have a pure heart? i don’t know how else to buy it without the paying in salacious words and risky texts. like paying for candy when you know you need fruit. so you’re full for a time, until the high wears off and you clutch your chest with the same hands you held the world in and beg for something to kill you. what death is worse than a belly full of sugar and a chest as hollow as a promise broken? you can build a thousand cathedrals inside of yourself without ever coming closer to god. you can bear the heaviest cross and still die outside its doors.