Victims Hanging From Unfriendly Walls

Within those years, like tiny buttons marching up a woman's bare back, we carried on. Our relationship was a compartmentalized ritual, a broken shell of a box decorated for practical consumption only.

You always hated those barren, naked nights. Too cold, too raw, you said. The blankets were too slick, the bedroom too distant. You never liked sushi anyway.

We marched past expensive restaurants, never dreaming, only eating our way through and around. Everything to be consumed in one fell swoop before moving on to the next. We were like army ants decimating our tiny landscapes, marching off to war, and taking all prisoners. We struggled to hang the victims of our battles from unfriendly walls but the corpses wouldn't stay put. Instead, they floated off to the ether, calm and at peace.

You always wanted for more. And more. Insatiable lust is easy and expected, it's everything else that's difficult to manage.

You always seemed to be a wide open mouth of deadly proportions with teeth of steel and glass. You eat everything out and spit it up. You starve, you hunger. You are never satisfied. You are the monster disco dancing, longing for that white polyester suit.

We craved around everything imaginable, sucking and tasting our way through polite, educated society. We defined ourselves by our consumption. We threw it all way after using it up, or even without the using. Sometimes we just had things and then let them go. Sometimes we were loving about it but most of the time there were animals involved just to keep things interesting.

You always seemed to be a mashed up conundrum of insecurities, a screwed up scramble of leftover emotions, and burned up good intentions. I know your secrets, all of them, like how you've taken to eating the very earth, chomping at the ground in desperation. I know you have indigestion problems. I know you drink like a fish. I know all living creatures flee before you in panic.