Cannibal

Sometimes, my love, I get a terrible hunger. Not for cakes or jam or things so sweet. No, I want to learn your flavor. I want to know the texture of your sorrow. I would start with your hands, those maps of gunpowder and grief. I would bite off each finger like a little biscuit, savoring the callouses, the history under each nail. A sacrament of sinew. Then your heart, that battle-worn, weary drum. I would take it in my hands, a dripping, precious fruit, and eat it while it was still warm, so its final, tired beats would be inside of me. To swallow your courage, to digest your ache. I would eat the grief-gristle from your bones, I would render the fat of your resilience, I would consume every inch of your war so you could finally be empty of it. I would house your ghosts in my own tummy. And you, my love, would finally, finally be at peace, living on as a quiet strength inside the one person who ever understood the taste of your beautiful pain.