To Be Devoured

by Sara Tantlinger

What a strange, marvelous thing it would be. Eat away the bad parts—for me, eat away my sadness, the sticky, bitter feelings with their rage inside my body, cloying my will to live some days. Most days.

Maybe that was the worst part, how you can understand a stranger because you know their pain, because you helped cause their pain.

For whatever reason, my mind has entrapped itself in a dark place this week, the kind of darkness where it’s better to avoid the people you love.

Our deaths deserve no other meaning than to be devoured. Our bodies have ruined the earth, it seems only right such bodies should give back to nature, to the animals. Because then it does not matter if society declares your face or skin or features wrong, we are all bodies waiting to be swallowed into soil, into the ocean.