How to Be Eaten

by Maria Adelmann

wanted to fold into myself, like origami, so that I could see only the darkness of my own inner edges.

To want is to be bewitched, I’ve long thought. If it’s beautiful or sweet, it will ruin you.

When she pressed her hand into the small of my back, my throat tightened and my chest swelled, a feeling like nostalgia, like she was someone I had already lost.

As if real life offered any consistent essential truths. As if it were possible for me to explain myself. As if I wasn’t always leaving out the most important parts.

“Aisha says morals create a labyrinth of rules geared toward blaming the victim,”