Dinner for One: Your Teeth in My Flesh

dilute.
to make it thinner or weaker to make it digestible
dilute.
to make me thinner or weaker i want to be digestible

i look like a fool holding a diluted heart out to the masses begging for someone to consume me
but when they do, they never finish
they mustn’t spoil their appetite they tell me they’ve barely taken three bites.

this cycle repeats over and over again
i look my therapist in the eyes as she tells me to dilute i must be digestible for my father
i look my father in the eyes as i become an almost flavorless dish he still struggles to consume me

my father has never been one for spice
as children anything spicy was banned from our household if he couldn’t handle it then none of us could have it
he takes a bite from me and i am still too spicy i thought black pepper was okay

no figure has been able to consume me not my parents
not my siblings not my uncles not my aunts not my cousins not my friends not my lovers
not my therapists not my doctors not my teachers

not my classmates not my bosses
not my coworkers
i pray for the day that i get to see my flesh in between another’s teeth
but until then it’s rage that is able to consume me. this burning anger that rips the flesh from my bones it drinks my blood in a rusty chalice
and picks the hair from its teeth it never allows me to dilute

it has an insatiable hunger for me it would have been romantic
maybe i would have found satisfaction
but i am no beautiful meal for it to consume
i am a prison yard lunch with the sludge bubbling it’s starved, that’s why it eats

the shame and guilt it feels for submitting to such filth fills me to the brim it purges me out on nearby victims
i become a stain on their new clothes
and a stench they carry around the rest of the day. it can’t digest me

i wish something else would consume me
to see a person holding bits of me with their teeth they have room for all of me
i watch as they dig their nails into my flesh i am a beautiful meal
i am full of flavors and textures that they fall in love with i want them to be insatiable
i want them to consume the being i become to forever have room for all of me
i want their hunger to only ever be satisfied by me
i want to be able to give them the nutrients they need to live i want them to stomach me
i want them to digest me

i don’t want to have to dilute in order to be digestible but i still dilute