HOW TO DEVOUR ME

[1]

To be loved by you is to cease existing.

Not all at once, but slowly, deliberately.

You peel me back, layer by fragile layer,

until the air stings,

until the raw of me is all that remains.

Take my fingers, yes—

snap them at the knuckles,

and use the shards to carve your name into my chest.

Take my mouth,

silence the trembling words

that beg for mercy you will never give.

Take my heart—no,

don’t hold it.

Crush it.

Let the blood spill like a flood in your hands.

I do not ask for tenderness.

I do not ask for love.

I only ask to be your ruin,

as you are mine.

[2]

Bathe in my tears—

don’t flinch when they scald.

Let my pain seep into your pores,

a brand,

a wound that never closes.

Drink my sorrow until it drowns you,

until you choke on the weight of me.

Swallow my screams whole.

Let them claw their way down your throat,

their echoes scraping your insides raw.

You will bleed from it,

but isn’t that what you wanted?

And when the butterflies in your stomach

begin to decay,

when their wings blacken

and their bodies rot inside you,

you’ll know what love truly feels like.

Putrid.

Ugly.

Unforgiving.

[3]

Break me,

but make it beautiful.

Twist my wings at the base,

bend the fragile bones

until they snap in your grip.

Let the feathers scatter around us,

falling like ash from a fire

you refused to extinguish.

Burn me, completely.

Don’t stop when I beg,

don’t stop when I scream.

Keep going until the flames are all that’s left of me—

until I am reduced to a heap of embers

you’ll tread on without a second thought.

You don’t crave love.

You crave the destruction of it.

And I?

I was born to be destroyed.

I was born to be the pyre

you set yourself alight on,

the martyr to your insatiable hunger.

[4]

And when you’ve hollowed me out,

when there’s nothing left but echoes,

I hope you ache.

I hope my ghost finds you

in the quiet of the night,

pressing its hands to your throat

like a lover you can’t escape.

I hope you hear my screams

every time you close your eyes.

Because even in death,

I will not let you rest.

You will carry my ruin with you—

a splinter in your soul,

a sickness you’ll never heal from.

When you’re done,

when I am nothing but soot and bones,

I hope you starve.

I hope you feel my absence

as a gnawing, relentless thing,

an ache in your gut

that no other love can soothe.

You will look for me

in every hand you hold,

in every kiss you take.

But you will only find emptiness.

You devoured me,

and in doing so,

you became a graveyard of my memory.

And still, I ask:

Did it hurt you?

Did I ruin you?

Or did I never matter enough

to scar you the way you scarred me?

***REMI.***