With a Vengeance

by Freydís Moon

Accepted gross misinterpretations of themself from people who just. . . didn’t get it. Wouldn’t get it. How could someone rested understand their sleeplessness? How could someone satiated commiserate with their hunger? It was like they’d forgotten how to settle. Like they’d unlearned how to eat.

But they’d gone home because home couldn’t hurt them when it was hollow, right?

“I gave you a choice and you chose to live. All that bullshit you’re carrying?” He leaned closer, inhaling inches from their chin. “All that rage? It tastes like Mary Magdalene’s fresh fuckin’ pussy—”

Numbness set in. That awful, blank nothing that always arrived after falling apart.

“When the world was new. Everything was becoming. Raw. Uncomplicated.

I remind you of a miracle. They didn’t dare say it aloud. You do.

Sometimes they couldn’t stand knowing how intimately he understood them. Couldn’t reconcile their desperate need for solitude with his presence billowing through their interior, hugging their bones, making a home in places they’d never let another person see. Their loneliness warred with their attachment to isolation, but with Eligos inside and around them, Kye couldn’t help feeling a strange sense of safety.

“That’s what you’re thinking? Glad I own this mess?” “Glad I get to witness you.”