By Autumn Thomas
But as compulsions are,
inevitability swallows the creature whole—
As if a practising dermatophagist.
You start with a simple pallet—
The chewing of fingernails, hair, cuticle,
Gorging oneself on the nothingness of chitin,
an insect circling the ember glow
Only to end up a scab on the lip of a stranger.
Wedding band of mortality—
A vestment clothed praying mantis the celebrant,
the metallic hints of humanity lying within the nail bed.
Insert a finger into the vastness,
Clad with molars made from dentin,
Living cells in competition with other living cells,
Carpels clamped by canines — crumbling as bone crushes bone.
Unable to separate metacarpal from muscle,
You pull finger from hand, and hand from face,
tendons tearing in enslavement to the orbit—
Reintroducing grains of sugar to your system,
Reefing syndrome,
Savouring heart/lungs kidneys/blood
to throw it all up on the sidewalk.
Autumn Thomas is a young queer writer from the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. With family spanning from Texas to the East Coast, to the Midwest, Autumn has had to learn how to express her queerness across regional cultures. She is now going into her senior year of undergraduate school at Hollins University Jackson Center for Creative Writing.
