Famine

“God will eat your tears,” I say. To me. To them.

I know this because the world is insatiable, so its dieties must be, too.

But the walls here are thick and hungry, like the mobs. They devour every sound, caging my words inside my stony tomb 'till I have nothing left in this forsaken space but the drip of the sink and the shuffle of the guard's boots outside my door.

And I look in the little mirror tacked to the wall and escape to the projection of my id, now bony and all corners. I wonder when my chubby cheeked innocence abandoned my body in favor of this face, with its empty eyes and sharp, pale lines.

The buzz of the florescent lights drones inside my eardrums like a plague, and I know. I know I don't belong here in this fated hospice—a final kicking place for the miserable and damned.

And yet, I am.

I exist, here, I remind myself, because somewhere I forgot. Forgot who I am and that I'm real. Forgot I wasn't the one who pierced the woman's lungs with silver hooks like meat and hung her from the rafters. But her blood adorned me, anyway, sticky and warm, as she dripped like candle wax from the heavens. And I knew then that death was indiscriminate, laying its mantle on anyone close enough to touch it.

It chose me, and soon enough I'll be dressed in red, too, a secret martyr for our sex. I'll die for her. Like her, my body exposed and raw. Forsaken. Souring meat up on display, while the blinding flash of cameras immortalize my empty shell.

It will all happen soon, I know. But the concept of time has broken inside these chambers making minutes feel like days and months and years. I read that once in a science magazine. That space and time are codependent creatures of each other. That spin and force keep the clocks in motion while our watery planet wraps around the sun. So I sit as still as I can. Maybe I can slow time like a Sunday afternoon and breathe a little longer. Even if the air tastes stale.

Maybe I'll eat that for my final meal. Breathing in the bits of dust like caviar while I close my eyes and tip my head back in the sensation. Would I be able to resist the urge to count them? Every rise and fall a bitter reminder that death will open up her mouth for me, too, jaw yawning wide to suck me in.

Five. Six. Seven. I'm already counting. But that's the point of it, isn't it? To help you understand what will be gone. It's delicate. Polite even, in its brutality, but it will be gone. The air. The drip. The boots. My face.

My eyes, like the desert stormy and dry. I will them to give up their briny reservoirs—a sacrifice to God.

“Eat them,” I whisper, eyes addressing the unseen moon as liquid snakes across my skin. “Eat them and spare my life.”

But no one sees my offering. Not God. Not the guard outside my cell. And even if I can't hear it, I know the clock ticks on as I taste the wet salt on my tongue.