You've Lost a Lot of Blood

by Eric LaRocca

suppose we all do in some way even if we’re content, dangerously happy with the body we’re sleeping next to, with the body we use for sex, for companionship, for love. Little insects—barbed and dangerous with their glittering exoskeletons and their sharp pincers—circle inside my head and whisper indecencies to me. For once, I’d like to see myself outside of myself. If that even makes sense. I’d like to crawl outside of my head and look back at the horrible thing I’ve become, the soulless spirit residing inside my shell.

The carnage of my thoughts. The

There were many things I imagined doing to him: cracking him open as if he were some expensive delicacy imported from a faraway land and gorging on his entrails until my stomach was fit to burst.

Stuck in my mind. Like our brains are made of flypaper and our thoughts are little insects to be captured, caught, and killed.

something unnatural, something so deliciously grim, when you consider what we’ll become in due time—when you consider how our fragile bodies will break down and rot, entropy and decay claiming us before we’re nothing more than a mere human stain: a sculpture puzzle of bones, a liturgy of human anatomy that once was and will never be again.