• • •
He ate me whole
on the path
to my bright future.
First
he seasoned me to his taste
in music, art and literature.
He consumed my thoughts,
my books, my breath.
Hoodie and all.
Even in warning-Red I posed no
danger.
Then
with a lick of his chops I was
lost.
I scraped at the insides,
clawed, kicked and choked
as I went down.
I wondered if he had a
me-shaped
bulge
(like one of those snakes)
on his front.
But no one saw
my fists flying in a cartoonish st-r-e-tch.
And no one heard
my muffled cries - they only
bubbled up his gullet
as a belch of hot air.
He just carried me along in there,
his baby. An elbow, a knee,
a breast,
a thigh.
His Babe. Baited.
I shrunk to fit.
I got too comfortable
lulled,
swayed to his
loping
gait.
Forgot where I was for a minute.
Went along with it,
charmed (tricked) by his wolfish grin,
deafened by his roaring laugh,
suffocated by his heavy arm along my shoulders,
then
isolated
by the airlock of his
attention.
But, no…
there were others in there
too.
Cramped histories of Love.
Still hungry,
he layered one of us
over the other
over the other
like ghostly double exposures.
What big eyes we have What big boobs we have What smooth skin we have.
Insatiable.
But I was restless,
wilder,
still picking from within.
Standing on those other girls’ shadows-
raised aloft.
Turns out I gave him
Heart-Burn.
He chewed me up and finally
vomited me
out
- a vernixed newborn.
• • •
Anna lives near Bristol in the UK with her young family. In her writing she hopes to explore the ambivalent sensations of living and mothering through grief and chronic illness while trying to take up space in a patriarchal society. Anna has had work published in Birch Bark MicroLit Almanac, Roi Fainéant Literary Press, Wishbone Words and The Woolf. Work is forthcoming in Ink and Marrow and Canary Collective. Instagram: @annamorris83
