People are so hungry here.

They take bites out of you that I’m not even sure they know they’ve taken. One after the other, flesh torn from bone until you’re shredded in places that you can’t hide with your clothes anymore.

I guess it’s not their fault, really.

I think that maybe they’re starving. They certainly seem to be. You fill them up, they want some more. Like naked craning baby birds they gape, open-mouthed, famished and squirming.

They look at me all hollow-eyed in the shops and in the restaurants. When they embrace me, I imagine that I can feel them estimating exactly how much they can consume. They poke at me online and I wonder if they have their ovens warming.

They telegraph their hunger, they broadcast it everywhere. They turn my brain inside-out with wanting to feed them. It seems so simple and right to give them what they need, until you run entirely out of you.

But share and share alike, right?

I don’t like to blame them. It’s just that it can get painful, to be devoured in this way. (They do it to each other too, it’s not just me. Oh, the chunks they tear out! I don’t know how they survive it. I have to look away.)

I can do this though. It’s fine as long as I rearrange a little. It’s totally worth it because it makes you so happy. I see that I can be whole and alone, or in pieces with the rest of you, and I choose you. Honestly I do. I really don’t mind.

It’s just that people are so neverendingly hungry here.

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This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.