#sacrificialdeer

I cannot hold you forever. 

I want to. Gods, I fucking want to. 

I want to watch the sun rise and fall in the wide, expansive sky until it swallows us whole, and even then I want to hold you as we drift through an empty universe. 

But I’m not allowed to keep you. 

I get you as long as I draw breath, not a moment longer. And my lungs have an expiration date coming far too soon. 

When I’m worm food, mushroom fertilizer, the soil bed upon which they will grow cotton in the blistering fields, I will have loved you for but an achingly brief moment. 

My love burns for you. It burned for you yesterday, it will burn for you tomorrow. 

And when the day comes that the bonfire I lit in your name is nothing but ash, it will have been worth it. For it burned all the brighter because I don’t get to burn forever. 

The soil will forget us, as will the sun, but somewhere on the wind we will be remembered. 

In the cicadas’ song, in the gentle current of the bayou, there will be the ghosts of us. 

We are not infinite, but I will love you infinitely, until my very last breath. 

When my lungs dry up, and my heart stands still, I may forget how to love you, but I’ll remember that I did. 

I did, I did, I did. 

SAVAGE SUMMER FEAST

[The Video Companion, by: Sacrificial Deer]

A video poem for those who rot beautifully. For the girl who bites too hard. For the one who begs to be devoured. For summer’s overripe bruises and sweetness past its prime.

𓆩 heat. rot. softness. ruin. 𓆪

🎙️ Written, voiced, and edited by me, Sacrificial Deer.

🍒 Video includes original footage + curated film/stock clips.

The rooms of the house are empty, cavernous halls sat waiting.

I found it at the edge of the forest, silver with frost and fresh-fallen snow, humming with something alive.

The iron gates hang rusted open, thrown wide years ago and never shut. The snow makes no sound beneath my feet—only the hush of the earth keeping its voice low.

The velvet wallpaper inside peels like tired skin and the chandeliers fall from the ceilings like stalactites.The hearths are cold and the mirrors are warm with old reflections.

I glide through the hallways, fingers brushing against curtains lined with dust and lace. I touched the piano’s keys just once, and it wept.

There are no ghosts here. There are only ghosts here.

In the west corridor, I lay in a bedroom that was once blue. The windows are tall enough to let the snowlight in. I sleep under the bones of a canopy bed, the house breathing in time with me.

You put me in a greenhouse thinking I would admire the blooms, grow cozy with the sun rays streaming through the glass window panes. But I am not content in a cage, no matter how pretty. 

I am cocooned inside your stomach, chewed and swallowed. Fleshy walls undulate on all sides, acid eating away at me. My skin falls into the river of digestion like slop, other girls half-burnt and skeletonized in the viscous pool. 

You think me warm, you think me kind, because you taught me to be. Told me it was my nature, that my teeth were formed dull and useless. You told me my nails were always brittle and weak, unable to slice into cotton, let alone skin. You told me my screams were shrill and undeserved, that no one would listen. 

But I will gut you if I have to.

I will sharpen my teeth using the bones of the women who came before me. I will break every nail, bloody every finger carving my way out of you. I will tear off pieces of myself, leave entire limbs behind to squeeze out through your ribcage. 

There is something inside of me that seethes, that snarls at the audacity to be caged inside another person, as squishy and spongy and yielding as I am. It prowls in the pit of my stomach, in the very same place you have dared to swallow me, and licks its maw hungrily.