death doesn't happen to you

a second skin

spring, 8/3/22
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the loneliness is eating you alive.

you know a few things about hunger. you know some things about greed. you know enough that when you're hungry, you can only go on for so long until your stomach turns inside out, clawing against its own lining to feed itself.

this appetite for company had been easy to satiate — and satiate it you must. or else an alarm sounds in your psyche that resembles both a sob and a scream, its cries reverberating through the hollow of your chest, rattling your sternum until it feels like its gonna collapse on itself and shatter into fragments.

it's quelled in the smallest forms of interaction; stolen glances, small talks, quiet laughters, shared smiles and you drink it up—not enough to stay hydrated, but enough to quench your thirst.

it had been enough then. you've trained your gut and brain to survive with what little you had. you've learned to mute the echoes ringing through the gaping chasm that demands  more! more! more!.

no, it's not good to be greedy. yes, it's better to have too little than too much.

yes, the acid doesn't sit well in your stomach. it just never makes it up your throat.

but the thing about hunger is that it wears you down. it chips away at your soul, pieces of your pride scattered in the wind as a sandstorm swirl inside where your heart resides. it leaves your foundation bare, its metal frame rusted and leaves you tipping over the edge of consciousness until eventually-

you eat.

it's small, and dare you say insignificant. their head barely an inch from yours, you try to stash this moment for the next time you turn yourself inside out. their breath caresses your clavicle, and you can almost feel yourself ripped open at the seams, searing hot lava burning your retinas as you wonder what changed.

it doesn't fill you up. instead, it leaves you rotten. rotten to the core. you take a bite of the apple, and it sits at the bottom of your stomach, foreign and out of place. you were never meant to hold something as heavy as that.

you pull away from them and feel it sloshing inside of you as you mutter out an apology. they look at you, and that alone leaves you craving for another taste. their eyes are like 2 blackberries, irises melting into the pupils with no tangible start. it leaves you sick.

you yearn for a calcified heart, bony and impermeable, an osseous surface to stretch this solitude over.

but the famine made your ribcage weak and porous, shielding a heart made up of muscle and chambers, fleshy and full of blood. shriveled and hollow.

you try to speak, but you can only smell bile and iron. you hear rasps, your larynx corroding against the concrete walls of your throat as you try to sound. they watch you struggle and take your silence as a token to leave. you don't blame them.

you are made of teeth, jagged and disproportionate, and without prying eyes or stubborn presence, you know what you are.

hungry. you're hungry.

you can't bring yourself to do anything about it, though.

so you wait, hoping that someone hears the churns and growls of your stomach and finds the tune familiar. you hope someone looks at you and sees the dark hollow of your cheeks or the sharp juts of your jaw, and offers you a slice of companionship.

maybe then, you'd hold them still, your nails digging into their skin until it breaks. you'd kiss their sickly sweet lips, swallowing their screams  because god- you've been ravenous for far too long.  you'd sink your fangs into their hearts and drink their soul observing how they taste, how they sound, how it feels to be full.

but at the end of the day, hope is just hope, and hunger is just disguised gluttony.

they pass you by, barely sparing you a glance while you abstain, painting over the claw marks of your stomach lining.

once again you find yourself standing front and center in your aloneness, wearing it like a second skin. tight and unrelenting.