By kai foo
how to eat me alive:
a guide to a seven-course meal (with a drink)
take my eyes for hors d’oeuvre, pick them off a tray.
peer at them and they’ll peer back with curiosity.
take one and pop it into your mouth. squelch.
chew it then bite into another and then let me
have a taste. the world is black for me. (is it red for you?)
[take my vision of reality.]
scoop out my parietal lobe and blend it smoothly into a
strange soup that i hear you sip. i ache as i try
some, yet there is nowhere that i can ache
from, my mind is mixed in our stomachs as you
laugh and tell me we’re moving onto the next dish.
[make sure i know nothing more than what you say.]
the appetizer is my liver and you feast on it just like
eagles do, telling me i would have loved this
should i have been able to feel it.
when it regenerates do the same, you are in
control of my body but i had said i enjoyed it once, hadn’t i?
[repeat it all over and over until i believe you.]
toss a salad of ears and noses. (they weren’t mine, you say i’ve never
had those.) they’re covered with dressing, someone else’s
sweat and tears. (i help you taste test and when
i said they taste a bit like mine did you called me a–)
swallow them and assure me they were from no one that mattered.
[you get mad if i do anything wrong. i should stop.]
tap immunity for a cocktail that’s salty and metallic, slightly like
a coin, both from cerebrospinal fluid and blood, full of
antibodies that aren’t mine. it stains your lips with a
thin layer of pale red. you lick them clean and let me down
the rest of the glass, savouring the sweet intoxication of my mind.
[you wear me out, wear me down.]
the main course is finally here, a heart still beating. it tremors when
it enters my mouth, slowly, slowly before stopping. it tastes tough
and rubbery and i suppose you taste it too. i’m trusting your
senses, since mine have always been gone. the metallic taste in
my mouth is familiar in some strange way, but i can’t think of what.
[thank you for letting me rely on you.]
the pancreas is dessert, i can tell from the taste of insulin in the piece you
provide me. it’s sweet, sweet, sweet and i suppose you can tell i
want more, you give me all i can want. (whoever this is from
must have had tubes running through them with glucose.) it’s paradise,
but then my mouth tastes sour and bitter and dry. it must have been a mistake.
[it was good and i wanted more.]
you push a mignardise between my lips and it’s like a bubble that
pops and liquid rushes out unlike any other. it tastes sour
just like the last course and it seems to burn but i can’t
feel a thing. it’s sour and i think it’s going through my tongue
but i can’t tell and you’re not saying anything so i suppose it’s alright.
[i can do nothing but trust you to be in control.]
haven’t you had a great meal?
i give only the best to my five star chef.
kai foo is a student by day and (occasionally) a writer by night. They enjoy writing poetry and excessive amounts of angst. despite their habit of producing morbid poems, they don’t particularly like the horror genre. They can be found on both archive of our own (ao3) and twitter as @kyoukiros.
Amber: The Teenage Chapbook 