Azure Arther
FEASTING
Whispers over electric lines, radio waves, distance.
We meet at the table, our phones the plates, our voices the utensils, our pain the food.
The flavor of shared trauma tantalizes, memories that
neither of us can stomach but swallow anyway—this meal that scrapes the insides of our
throats raw, drawing moisture from the desert of tears,
where our emotion once lived—this spread is empty, but infinite.
Childhood PTSD becomes the dowsing rod, honed towards the depths:
Drink, and allow the fire to find the flood.
But it feels good to prepare this repast,
to taste the hurt
with someone who remembers who we were and who we could have been,
prior to the shattering, the tearing of the muscles,
the repetition that made us lycanthropes,
hybrids trapped inside of our skins,
part man,
part animal.
Feral at times.
Tame at times.
Cornered beast at times.
Mistreated at times.
Those times are what forged our bonds. Friendship.
So.
We whisper and eat heartbreak, a shared banquet of sorrow,
remorse, lost dreams,
as bitter as their names when they go down,
But at least
we eat together.