The Devourers

by Indra Das

Intimacy lies in the body and the soul, in scent, in touch and taste and sound. A man whose name you don’t know can tell you a tale to move you to tears, just by filling and emptying his lungs, by moving his tongue and lips, his fingers. Even after, you might never know him.”

Sunset skirted the hills and turned the tree-clad slopes dark and blue, the shoulders of giants shrugging flame to the sky.

We are the devouring, not the creative.

I saw the muscles tie their graceful knots under the skin that covers your jaw.

“Your teeth are sharp stones, dulled by civilization,” said Gévaudan.

The words jumped out of my mouth as if they were a living thing, or an exclamation spoken by none other than the creature growing in me, or by the sinews and spaces of my own body.

All of us wandering the arteries of the delta, drawn here to form a glittering human scab on the water.