Stone

The truth is I don’t want him watching me while I eat. I don’t want him to see my hunger. If you have a need and they find it out, they will use it against you. The best way is to stop from wanting anything.

~Margaret Atwood, "Alias Grace"

I hold myself still, in check

It's not that i never admit want or hunger, but only what i give you. What you haven't tried to wrest away from me, those apples given are not but little formalities, doled out graciously so that I should take them, to keep the doctor away, who might fix what ails or just stumble around and make it worse.

I see what he's after. He is a collector. He thinks all he has to do is give me an apple, and then he can collect me.

But I don't see what he's after. He makes no attempt to wrest from me more than i am willing to give, which he waits for me to do so that it is given freely as i force myself to admit to my own desire. Chess of sorts, trading apples and snippets, a lack of wine and whippets, chemicals to absolve and transfer blame for hunger but instead it's black and white.

A surprising lack of clarity perhaps, He plans his moves, an in the moment lack of planning as planning is artifice and lacks substance, based on ephermal thoughts and expectations. Trying to sit on a cloud and expecting to remain on solid ground while seeing cherubim and seraphim as the conspirators in the madness.

I move unconsciously horizontal, he moves diagonally, at once to shorten the distance and hasten escape. The spaces blur and the rules of engagement change but there's no more red queen on the horizon. The white queen that emblazoned in red has gone for tea, up the rabbit hole again, off for more apples. Feed me, drink me. "Make me feel like poison exists in my veins, my time is short and my moves are broadcast. "

Let her be rescued by the rabbit. Let her chase time. I've crossed across the tales and gone from delusion of imagined reality to the unreliable narrator of a supposed truth, one I will never really know. Is it what i classify it that makes it different, is it the perspective or the words chosen? Does it even matter, but to the one who reads it for now, i who keep only bits and pieces stored away, patchwork to use as i unreliably narrate my truth and i hide an apple in my skirt and yet one in my heart, as a stone