Hell

“The blowing mist, filled with the light of the moon, was seeking to swallow the lamps of the heavens.”
― Anne Rice, The Wolves of Midwinter

“eat, baby.
eat.
chew.
please.
I know it hurts. I know it doesn’t feel good.
please.
I know your hunger is different than mine.
I know it doesn’t taste the same as mine.
imagine you could grow up all over again
and pinpoint the millisecond that you started
counting calories like casualties of war,
mourning each one like it had a family.
would you?
sometimes I wonder that.
sometimes I wonder if you would go back
and watch yourself reappear and disappear right in front of your own eyes.
and I love you so much.
I am going to hold your little hand through the night.
just please eat. just a little.
you wrote a poem once,
about a city of walking skeletons.
the teacher called home because you
told her you wished it could be like that
here.
let me tell you something about bones, baby.
they are not warm or soft.
the wind whistles through them like they are
holes in a tree.
and they break, too. they break right in half.
they bruise and splinter like wood.
are you hungry?
I know. I know how much you hate that question.
I will find another way to ask it, someday.
please.
the voices.
I know they are all yelling at you to stretch yourself thinner.
l hear them counting, always counting.
I wish I had been there when the world made you
snap yourself in half.
I would have told you that your body is not a war-zone,
that, sometimes,
it is okay to leave your plate empty.”
― Caitlyn Siehl

“He is probably the most savagely beautiful human being I have ever seen. It's not his looks that freeze my limbs to stone though. It's the way he looks at me, like for this split second I am the sole focus of his entire world.”
― Callie Hart, Deviant

“Actually, he had always found talk of hell highly offensive. He’d always sensed that those who did believe in hell had little or no empathy for those they assumed to be suffering there. Indeed, quite the opposite. Hellfire believers seem to delight in the idea that most of the human race would end up in just such a horrible place.”
― Anne Rice, The Wolves of Midwinter