The Girl-Woman and The Box With No Windows

Image courtesy of author.

I find myself always in this box, this box with four walls and no windows.

In this box I chew.

I chew my cuticles between my teeth, 

meticulously peeling the layers of skin back until my nailbeds are raw and bloody. 

I am a glutton for my hands, 

my nails, 

my body. 

I am always gnawing and tearing at myself, 

this choiceless hunger directed at my own organs. 

I am starving. 

I have to eat. Have to. 

I wonder if I will eventually grow so hungry, 

so desperate, 

that I begin sawing off limbs. 

That I start from my legs, 

gripping my ankle bone and sinking my teeth into my calf. 

My thigh. 

I wonder if I will crack open my bones and suck the marrow from them. 

I have to eat. Have to. 

Maybe as I rip into myself, 

as my fingers burrow between my ribs to peel apart my diaphragm, 

I will leave myself. 

I will sit in the corner and watch this girl 

(or is it a woman? She looks like a girl) 

devour herself. 

Maybe I will grow so enthralled by her gory performance 

that I will forget who the girl-woman is, 

forget where she came from. 

I will forget that her favorite color is brown. 

I will forget her mother, 

I will forget her name. 

The gnashing of her teeth will grow louder, 

she will claw at her corpse 

(she has been dead now for a long time) 

with greater frenzy 

and we will suddenly be in that box again, that box with four walls and no windows. 

I will lean forward in anticipation, as I watch the girl-woman eat herself alive 

(she is still dead, she has been dead now for a long time). 

My eyes will follow her hands, 

her nails scrabbling against stained bone,

and I will (barely noticing) lift my finger to my mouth. 

Then I will begin to chew.