AUTHOR: Arianna
EDITOR: Aqibah
ARTIST: Ara Djati
TRIGGER WARNINGS: GORE AND VIOLENCE
remorse sinks from your teeth to plastic necks / biting down on raspberry-flavoured molds, creating pockets of spit in a poor woman’s hands / ‘tart, savour, bitter like fourteen’ slips discreetly from the four corners of your tattered tongue / eat me / feed me / a gargle of saliva and additives—something about cornstarch, or burnt barbecue chicken—spools on the principal's desk
rip my bones / snap my ankles / your demand for destruction is diagnosed as expected, as pink and raw and feeble / they are slipping poison into your crumbling sandcastle limbs and crushing lead trips on the gashing wounds—stop them, please / speak up / you were force fed slivers of wood and cough in iambic pentameter, you were brought to that baby blue pool and slurped up the leftover water, your gills glistening, gills that were red and inflamed like realistic smiles
you were so far above them / there were rumors that the stars in the sky shone at the whim of your beating heart / we pulled it out and nothing happened / we stripped you of our love and you froze
we see you on the side of the road, sometimes / as pink and pudgy as the day we first killed you / your bones were protruding half empty from the translucent glow of your caterpillar covering, your wings spread out in a furry blanket at your feet / headlights burn and the world jumps forward, trading plastic with metal and barbecue chicken with rum / we slice open the sun and let you bundle in its warmth, desperate for an end to the shaking and the ache / slowly your bones will fuse together, your lips will part to reveal white plaster / the sticky sensation of your tongue slipping down your neck, haunted / ghostly / bubbling to the surface in a golden shower / you will keep me in the sun until I burn / ‘tart, savoury, bitter like asphalt and petrol’ you are sewn shut / angelic, really / a floating mess of hair and spit—an ethereal guiding light
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