The Butcher and the Baby
I’m dreaming again but I’m scared to make a noise in my sleep, scared to be made aware of me by someone I made too aware. Things sound more metallic than I want to believe but the words get lost in different places. Magnets at the wrong end, the truth is muffled through the air and loses meaning as soon as I give it some. I project bizarre, perverse stories, and surely they must all be laughing at me, certainly they’re watching. There are so many things I’ve turned with the toe of my boot and dragged across the pavement to get them to stay in place, ensure they don’t follow me, things I've ruined into the ground. There is nothing you can do to convince him to see you as something more than disgusting after you’ve called the wrong things into question. I’m steeping myself in the warm and wet cupped hands of abasement, a baby, hold me just like I’m home.
He said it like something stuck to the back of his teeth, poking his gums and cutting, too long after the meal was over. Like the indigestible bits were sitting sharp in his mouth, and those parts were me. Like if he could speak me ugly enough to believe it himself it would scrape the taste of me off his lips completely. My body, scraps of meat hosed off the floor of the grocery store killing room, only a thin foggy sheet of plastic in between the butcher and the baby in the front of the shopping cart. There’s no separate bin for the used up bloody gloves. It all gets taken out to the same places, what were not supposed to chew on.
What do you tell your lust? It should feel dreadful as a dog pissing on the rug, shove your nose in it, baby, then you’ll finally learn. Maybe I’ll get the commands right this time, wait, stay, come, let me in, lock me out, walk me home to the other side of the house. Where else is the dog supposed to sleep? It feels filthy now, like the bits of death from under his fingernails lingered, too apathetic to the flesh that comes and goes.
When’s the last time you sat in pews? Tell the truth. What if your mother knew?
How close does a magnet get to another before it vibrates with repulsion and is forced away with fear? If you shout your own name into a dark, emboldened place, what does it ring back to you? Do you like the way it sounds, darling? When you’re out there on your own?
