I pull out all my nerves and scrub them clean to purge the memory of you, and you cling on like the stubborn slime you are.
It is corrosive, all-consuming. my flesh melts into a soupy puddle and I can't tell where you end and I begin.
I find my touch burns everything I want to hold too. I think I was born with a piece of your soul in mine.
I tear into my skin until I'm splitting atoms to separate myself from anything you've touched. I rip out all the pieces of my brain that remind me of what your face looked like. I split my tongue in half for daring to repeat you.
I look into the eyes of a picture of myself and register the same fear that licks the inside of my chest. I can see my lungs constricting and my body twisting itself together to try and reject you. I can feel my mind eating itself to give it something to do.
I can hear my stomach growl.
I’m afraid of you.
My body wages war on itself at your command.
You're afraid of me.
The exposed tendons in my hand are slippery and loose. I imagine your neck would feel dry beneath them. I imagine your heart would fit perfectly in their center. I imagine the tenderness of the meat between my teeth.
I find my face harder to picture these days. I find it harder to look into my own eyes without seeing yours. I find it harder to resist the urge to rip my own throat out in hopes of staining your clothes with my blood.
God understood any flesh derived from his own would enter this world hungry. God understands the child's urge to consume its creator. God knows what meat tastes like. God knows how the blood feels running down his chin.
Cain knows the stickiness of old blood between his guilty fingers.
Cain knows hunger.