𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚡𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚛𝚊

like animal carcass.

I am splayed open, salted and tenderized.

My fatty bits sectioned off with bakers twine.

Red juices weep from my wounds.

Not blood, but the meat sweating

for better flavor.

A heavy palm comes down hard on my rump.

He lifts from the flank.

He samples the breast.

Hunger animates his body but he knows he must wait until the meat is ready.

He massages oils into the fibrous texture.

Working it in with the strong flat pads of his thumbs and fingers.

The meat is shivering.

The meat is shaking.

I’m told this is a chemical process.

Even once dead and removed from the body,

the meat dances on the table.

Due to the residual energy and nerve endings present in the tissue.

The flesh will twitch.

But it must be ready.

When it is ready he’ll carve it off in slabs,

and drop them into his mouth;

a mouse falling into the mouth of a snake

hanging by the tail.

He’ll glide the knife under the muscle

and it will slide down his throat

but it must be ready.

The meat is hanging but will not dry.

It drips

and drips

more juices.

The air is escaping.

The tendons are loosening.

He ties her off again and again.

Soon little lamb.

Soon.

In the chapel,

in a bedroom,

in an alley late at night.

Always facing an inflated

godlike

version of some guy.

But as a girl you do what you need to survive.

You open wider, take the body.

Thank your father, you’ve been naughty.

2 Hail Marys, 20 lashings.

“I’ve been sent to punish you for daring to exist.

You will never know a love as meaningful as this.”

I’ve memorized

the lines

since I was 10.

From the Bible,

from the playbook,

from the magazines for men.

If you should mess it up, you’ll start again.

But, still, they only want

the women

they condemn.

I think that I’d have too much fun in hell.

With the pagans

and the hedonists

and sapphics there as well.

Purgatory seems the better fit

I can’t stand waiting in the corner,

but I do love being hit.

There’s not a torture you can prescribe

that I wouldn’t find

a way to like.

Every single second I’m alive

I’m sharpening an axe I’d like to grind.

“I was sent to punish you

for the way I was designed.

You will never know a love

that you fear more than mine.”