Imprinted and always hungry out of habit. Insect brain imagines an itch. Kitchen counter pulses with life. A dozen scurrying little bodies unthreatened by their motionless host. Not dead, but close enough.
Television light gives color to pale skin. Nerves burn out and veins collapse. Night turns the window into a faulty mirror. Thin arms tease vascularity and shadows suggest muscle definition somehow remains. Eye sockets hollowed to black revealing nothing. A breathing skull.
What could come after this? Learn to appreciate the smallest things and call it wisdom? Real chemical addicts know relief is its own special type of thrill. The harmless aftermath of fear. Release after unbearable anticipation. The brain must light up.
A cultivated enjoyment of minor cuts and abrasions. A knife slips, iron jutted in a blind path. Arm in arm struggling to pin one another on the ground. Something would have to fill the void left in the pleasure center. Self-infliction, that child’s toy meant to be put away, is passé and a level below because it’s rooted in control.
The power to heal wounds kept private. Keeping one’s focus on animal heat and the trembling flesh. If fire will kill you eventually, does it matter that someone added an accelerant? Teeth grind together with each slipping thought. Who was that in the mind’s eye before they dissipated towards fragmenting edges? Someone from before. Someone unimportant.
The days pass preoccupied with subtraction. When it’ll run out. If there’s time for it now. Schedules still exist, but not for much longer. Making do with what’s left at the bottom of drained containers. Paint thinner cut with nauseating sweetness.
Ears perk up at the sound of the candy man making his arrival. Insect brain imagines an itch. Dying for a taste of something not meant for our tongues. Like blood from heaven.