I couldn’t stop peeing on the plane. For the entire 11-hour flight to Shanghai, I would get up every 20 minutes to urinate. I tried sleeping to stop the signals sent to my bladder, but it didn’t work. I would tread lightly into sleep, only to dream of urination. I had to wake myself up to perform the act, for fear of pissing myself in my seat. I made sure my father booked an American airline for my first flight alone, since I’m a picky eater. The in-flight meal was a bland combination of grilled breast and mashed potatoes. A Japanese couple in the row across from me stared as I ate my portion. Maybe they were vegetarians, but more likely just foreign carnivores.
Yan Yu, my cousin, and her father, my Jiu Jiu, picked me up from the airport. The wet heat was first to greet me when I landed. I spoke Chinese well enough to make conversation, but Yan Yu liked to practice English. For the first dinner of my summer-long stay, Jiu Jiu dropped us off at a fusion restaurant downtown that required a password to enter. Yan Yu typed it in on an iPad set up at the entrance, and the doorman granted us entry into the cool dark cavern. “They have Kobe beef from Japan that melts in your mouth like milk,” Yan Yu advertised. She scanned a QR code to open the menu on her phone, then read each item out loud for me: red braised pork belly, turtle soup, filet mignon steak, lobster risotto. I wanted real meat after the long flight, so nothing enticed me. The hardest part about visiting family in China was the food, and vice versa for them. Most Americans can’t live without meat. It’s not just cultural, our economy depends on it. American meat is exported all over, baiting curious foreigners with a bite of freedom. Yan Yu scrolled to a special section of the menu. “You’d probably rather eat something more familiar,” she suggested. To my delight, written there in English, was my favorite dish. A waiter came up to our table, ready to type our order into another iPad. “I’ll have the Man’s Liver,” I said in my most confident Chinese.
When we finished eating, Jiu Jiu picked us up with their little white dog Wawa in the car. He rustled in my lap, scratching my bare thighs as he reached for the window. Dogs are easy to love because they’re bred to love us. Not like cows, which were bred to be eaten. At some point humans decided on these rules: the dog as man’s best friend, the cow as man’s dinner. Now dogs eat beef-flavored kibble. Humans could eat pigs, cows, baby cows, chickens, ducks, lambs, frogs, snails, deer—but dogs? That’s going too far. All animals are unfair game; it sickens me that anyone could eat one.
I try my best to keep an open mind with our family abroad. They’re just as disgusted by our eating habits, so we all try to be tolerant of one another’s diets. Yan Yu was always nice and understanding about it, at least in front of me. She had to be more adventurous than most foreigners; she was moving to America for college soon, to join her high school boyfriend at a school in Texas. His name was Chao Yi but insisted that everyone call him Chris. I met him years ago, without Yan Yu there, when he was touring schools in America. He was a few years older than her, and they had been dating only a few months at the time. It was already assumed that Chris would one day become part of the family. I hadn’t started high school yet, but even back then I found their relationship oddly premature. Not that I knew Yan Yu very well, but she didn’t seem that naive.
My father was from central Texas and still shared a ranch property with his family there, so we visited sometimes. When Chris needed accommodation for his college visit—his first trip outside of China—my mother naturally insisted we host and take care of him. Chris was obsessed with America—our TV shows, rap music, authentic fast food. He was especially infatuated with Texas, where American barbecue is all-you-can-eat. During the car ride to his future campus, I had no choice but to get to know him. It felt stupid for us all to be there, so I asked him: why Texas? Massive stretches of empty land rolled past us. “It’s the biggest,” he answered obviously. “That’s Alaska,” I said, “and China is way bigger, if size is what matters to you.” He shook his head and gestured outside, simulating its greatness by stretching his arms, trembling his hands. His English wasn’t good enough to articulate it at the time. I was still barely a teenager, but I had an idea of what he meant: everything here felt bigger.
The campus was dead with stale hot air. The school bordered the freeway that took us there, with a meatpacking factory on the opposite side of the road. A girl with spray tan lines around her cleavage weaved past us in the parking lot. I watched as Chris’ eyeline failed to stay on course. I always avoided eye contact with him before I even understood why; it was better than knowing where he might be looking, or how he looked at you. A bronze Confederate soldier stood at the entrance, forcing Chris to stop and look up. He stared at the statue for some time, taking it all in. “Already, I’m hungry,” he smiled, “can we try the cafeteria?” He didn’t even have to tour the campus; his mind was already made up before we came.
Yan Yu wasn’t boring like Chris, I had no idea what they could possibly talk about. I almost wished I had that ability, finding something to like in just about anyone. But now she was moving to Texas for him, leaving her entire family behind, and all I could think was how embarrassed I’d be to do that. Was it really so worth it, just to feel like you belonged to someone?
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It’s hard being away from home for so long. I used to feel the need to rationalize eating human meat, and Yan Yu would nod as if she agreed completely: “Whenever an animal dies in a movie, everyone always cries because it’s innocent. But when a character dies, it’s just part of the plot. They had it coming. So do real life people.” I would explain our eating practices to her the way an elementary school teacher would, and soon Yan Yu was regurgitating my argument to our other relatives, though she still couldn’t help but eat animals. When animals eat each other, it’s only natural because they’re equals. But when humans hunt, abuse, and slaughter animals, it’s not a fair fight. We may be born with a similar innocence, but it can never be preserved like in an animal. This is why there’s no real guilt to feel for eating another person; their corruption, your own, was inevitable. You can digest well knowing at some point in their life, they likely deserved to be dissolved in stomach acid. Foreigners love to argue that more emotionally intelligent beings, like people or dolphins, deserve to live longer lives, with the fairest possible endings. You’d think then that a dumber human might be more deserving of slaughter. Or that dolphins wouldn’t be held captive in aquariums. It’s like the trolley problem goes: Is there such thing as a more important person, with a life so precious that it’s worth five ordinary lives? Are we the more important animals? I’d rather run a train over ten men than one pig.
It’s not like our country runs rampant with killers sucking on children’s blood. Every once in a while, you’ll hear about someone so starved that they lost control and killed for food. It comes up on the news here and there, then a protest for stricter enforcement of meat control might spring up. Most of these activist groups are led by victims of attempted feasting, or the loved ones of wrongfully eaten victims. They speak at rallies, recounting the horrors of their attacks in great detail, exhibiting scars and teeth imprints. They populate less mainstream media outlets that I only came across online a handful of times growing up. That’s too bad for them, I remember thinking as a kid, but what were we supposed to do—not eat? At the end of the day, this was how it had always been. Those people who wanted things to change didn’t even really know what to ask for, how to reinvent life as we know it.
The meat most Americans consume are fresh corpses; morgues are like meal prep. We’re more civilized than feral, despite the stereotypes. Humans, dead or alive, take up space. Instead of occupying miles and miles of plotted land with corpses wasting away, we reuse. Different states have different laws about the age a body qualifies for harvest, so there’s no veal. But you can tell when meat comes from a much older body, it has a more gamey taste. Some higher-end food distributors pay extra to ensure their meat supply is sourced only from younger bodies. In California, you can legally request that your body not be repurposed for the meat industry, but most people are happy to contribute. You can donate your body to science, or hunger. Corpses are immediately put onto ice and sent off to meat mortuaries so they stay fresh, unless you’re registered as a non-harvestable body. There’s a market for hunters that kill humans for sport—mostly suicidal people who volunteer as prey—but it’s illegal, and controversial like euthanasia. One time when we were staying in Texas, my parents and I tried a local barbeque place crowned “the best burger in the country” for its freshly killed human patties, served on a sesame bun with lettuce, tomatoes, “special sauss,” and pickles. I hate tomatoes. Even if you remove them, the watery seeds leave a disgusting tomato taste. But tomatoes aside, the fresh meat burger did taste better than fully aged. I didn’t question how it was sourced, I was only twelve. All I knew was that the meat felt good.
Yan Yu’s mother, now Jiu Jiu’s ex-wife, joined us at the apartment for dinner one night. We gathered around the table, taking turns moving the portable fan to blow in our seat’s direction. Similar to Chris, Yan Yu’s mother was enthralled by American culture, but her fascination was more like that of a cat pawing at a dead mouse. “How quickly do you think you could finish a meal? I hear Americans eat even while they’re driving. Have you ever done one of those hot dog eating contests? Of course, it’s not really made from dogs. They grind up the bits no one wants to eat like the head, or lower-grade muscles, into a pink paste. I read every hot dog you eat takes 36 minutes away from your life.” I didn’t remember ever meeting Yan Yu’s mother before, but she kept insisting I was the fattest baby she had ever seen. “You didn’t even have the teeth yet to eat tanghulu, but your mother couldn’t keep it away from you. You just kept sucking on the hard sugar like a toy. Anything Yan Yu was eating, you’d cry until we gave you the same thing. Then you’d spit it out and scream some more. Your mother had to cover your mouth to stop your breathing, just so you’d stop crying. I remember thinking, what an American baby. You could be hungry for the Earth, eat the whole planet, and then throw it up because you didn’t like the taste of dirt.” She slurped a noodle of cold jellyfish, coating her lipstick in grease.
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On a solo weekend trip, I took a bullet train from Shanghai to Hangzhou. A stewardess passed through with a cart of snacks, and I bought a plastic bowl of instant noodles with hot water and some meaningless flavor. An itch tickled the walls of my stomach. When I arrived at the train station, the sun was already preparing to set. An old high school friend of my mother’s welcomed me to their hometown. Before dinner, where more of my mother’s old classmates awaited, he insisted we take a taxi to visit Xi Hu, the great West Lake. There was barely any sun left when we arrived, and the moon began to make its appearance. I tried appreciating the city lights dotting the water, with lotus flowers the size of heads standing up straight in the lake. I had to get used to this, the hunger, or it would eat me from inside out. The uncle went on about my mother when she was sixteen years old, my age now, and already showing promise of a greater future than their peers. “We were worried for her safety at first. Back then there was no tolerance for the American diet. Certainly no one wanted to take part in it,” he said, “Things are different now, more open-minded. China is influenced by your culture more than we like to admit.” His phone rang, and he excused himself to take a business call. “You keep going, just don’t wander too far,” he said, “You may feel grown up, but you’re a girl still.”
I walked along the stone pavement bordering the lake, where water splashed a few feet below the edge. I imagined the men who dug up the earth to carve this lake centuries ago, filling a giant bowl of water, greedy with thirst. Mosquitoes danced along the surface and around my calves. People passing by seemed to stare at me. They must have been able to tell I was American from the way I dressed, and my eyes always searching for something. I wished I hadn’t worn such a short dress, but any more fabric would have been intolerable. The heat and hunger combined made me too lightheaded to keep walking. I worried I might pass out in public from starvation. Off to the side, a large willow tree hung over the lake’s edge, with a bench hidden below its drooping branches. I sat down, feeling the strings of every muscle wobble within my skin casing. I imagined Yan Yu’s mother picking at my thighs with chopsticks, a better jellyfish salad. Before me, a set of stone steps led down to a small concrete platform along the surface of the water. A cluster of lotus pads floated below, with a gentle tide that occasionally overflowed onto the platform. I felt the mosquitoes feeding on me, and wondered how many bites it would take for me to experience real blood loss. The buzzing harmonized into one low hum, then faded into background noise. I was too drained to do anything about them. I sat there, offering myself as a milkshake to be sucked on through a hundred tiny straws. The moon, now in full effect, was red, I swore it was red. From air pollution, or some kind of eclipse, I couldn’t say why. But it was red, like lean muscle under skin. And round, perfectly round, like a patty.
Click. The camera of someone’s phone cut through the air. Click. Not far behind me, I felt a body stir. An immature male voice emerged in Chinese, “Can I take your picture?” The boy looked a couple years younger than me, short with skinny limbs, except for calf muscles that bulged.
“You already took one,” I told him, “without asking.” He circled around to stand before me, the edge of the lake looming a foot behind him. He blocked the red moon with his spiky head. An awful distance stretched between us, too far to back out of now. I thought seriously about what went on in the minds of men, of boys even before they could be called men. I was always thinking about it. Still seated, I crossed my arms in defense. He kept his eyes on me in a lazy stare, his mouth hanging open like a dog, panting. The pools of sweat staining his shirt underarms came into view as he raised his phone to eye-level. My feet sunk deeper into my shoes, planted into the pavement.
He dropped to the ground crouching low, almost too fast for me to realize. He shielded his face with his phone, angling the camera to expose me. Click. Click. I stood up straight, gripping the sides of my dress in my fists. Still at a squatting level, he scrambled towards me like a spider, giggling, and grabbed one of my ankles. A rupture went off in my body, summoning its final defense. The accumulated heat redirected itself, converting the energy into a volatile force. With the ankle clasped in his hands, I thrust my leg back then drove it forward, deep into his stomach, puncturing him with the tip of my foot. All of me propelled him backward, and he plummeted down the stone steps behind him. I heard a snapping thud. His body sprawled out on the platform like a water bug. I couldn’t tell if he was really dead from up above, but one leg twisted backwards, red and contorted. I carefully descended the steps. The top of his head hung off the edge of the platform, dipping into the lake. Even in the dark, blood visibly drained from a gash on his skull, trickling into the clear water and making fish scramble. He let out one forced, shallow breath before he stopped trying. I kneeled on the ground, hovering over him. His shinbone jutted out from the back of his calf muscle, red tissue exposed. You’d think you wouldn’t be able to take a bite of raw flesh, but it’s only because your mind stops you from biting hard enough. If you believe you can, if you really want to, you can eat anything.
After I finished, I kicked the body into a pile of lotus pads. I watched it sink down to the bottom of the lake until I could no longer see. I was careful not to get my dress dirty. I squatted down to dip my hands in the lake, running them through water gently. But when the blood began to wash away, I pulled them out on reflex. I had been panting up until now, I realized. I shook the water droplets off my hands, and they quickly dried again in the hot air. There was still leftover blood stained up to my wrists, and I licked them clean. Sucking on each finger, my breathing slowed to a stop. Even the mosquitoes had become quiet out of respect for my mealtime. My gut puffed out through my dress lining. I had never consumed so much meat in one sitting, and yet I could have eaten more, I wasn’t full.
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When I got back to Shanghai, Yan Yu made it her job to be my tour guide of the city for the rest of the summer. Every day, she would plan a new sight to see or place to eat, and every night she would check them off her list. I got the sense she did it for herself too, her last summer in China for the foreseeable future. Chris didn’t come back to China for two whole years, even with Yan Yu waiting on him at home. It wasn’t until the same summer I visited that he returned. Once you left, it was a rare occasion to come back. For Chris, this was a good thing—one of the lucky foreigners who found home in a strange new world, not the land where he was born. His time in the United States was like an affair, the country his mistress. Yan Yu had to get there as quickly as possible to find out what had been missing. Once American, she would look down to discover the pit inside her was growing and that it had to be filled. You have no choice but to fill it up. Only after it has been dug up and carved out do you realize it was always empty.
One day in mid-August, Yan Yu took me to a grid of traditional alleyways full of tourist shops and cafés. She got a durian flavored popsicle which smelled like urine to me, an obvious mark of a foreigner. “You had to eat it since you were a baby for it to taste good,” she said. I laughed as Yan Yu took photos of me, yelling at people to get out of the way while I posed. We stopped at a traditional tea house which now sold boba and slushies. I swiveled around in my stool while Yan Yu talked about her upcoming plans to move. “When I get there, I can take care of you,” she said, “Or you’ll have to take care of me first.” I rubbed the plastic cup of iced milk tea along my forehead, condensation trickling down. “Chris will be the one to take care of you,” I said. She nodded and smiled, watching tourists come and go through the entryway. I couldn’t tell if it was a look of fondness, for those who traveled so far to appreciate her home, or envy, for so easily coming and going as they pleased.
We kept exploring the grid until Yan Yu led us to a dead-end without vendors or tourists, just some old boxes of vegetable discards. “This one doesn’t have anything fun.” She signaled to go back the way we came. I recalled the last time I was left alone, what it was like to eat fresh meat, still warm. Its tenderness felt clean on the tongue, with a taste so rich it was almost sweet. It would be strange to eat a relative, I admitted to myself. Some nutritionists warn that the overlap in DNA can cause mild symptoms of food poisoning. Yan Yu waited for me to respond. If she stayed in America, someone would eventually eat her when she died. I wondered if she had already considered this. In your will, you can request a specific person to eat your remains after you pass. It was a popular tradition in the South for widows to feast in their grief. You could be driven to consume a loved one, so they stayed inside you, keeping them forever. At least until the next person digested you both, together. But I never felt hungry for someone I could miss. And who would miss me enough to eat me? Maybe there was no way for me to know, I wasn’t eighteen yet. I continued following Yan Yu out of the alley. What if the older I got, the hungrier I’d become?
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Nearing the end of my trip, we gathered all the family members in Shanghai for a huge feast at a hotel restaurant. Yan Yu hoped Chris would come. I didn’t see him, but I barely remembered what he looked like and could have mistaken him for a cousin. Yan Yu suggested we do karaoke after dinner since she had never gone before, and there was a lounge a few floors down. Everyone in the younger generation waited in anticipation. I was the youngest one there, and most excited of all. Many of my uncles, or perhaps cousins, smoked confidently in their seats. In America, I never thought I could have so much family. At memorial services, or a rare wedding, I always looked like an implant someone hired to be there. Though I didn’t blend in here either, I had some form of anonymity at the dining table—not really knowing everyone, everyone not really knowing me. It was as if someone pointed at me and claimed, “You’re part of this group,” and that was that. We all agreed, and I was satisfied. That was all it took for me to be bound by blood, bound by a meal. My family drank loudly, offering me fruit wine, which I happily accepted. They ordered platters of roast duck, drunken chicken, cold cuts of beef, eggs and tomatoes. I still hated tomatoes. Jiu Jiu offered me a platter of pork with tofu mixed in. I accepted the portion politely, scooping it onto my plate. Another uncle dished up a serving of steamed fish for me. An aunt gifted me the last meat bun from a steamer. They gnawed through legs and spines, swallowed eyes and ligaments, discarding only the absolute most inedible parts of the animal. They spat them out onto secondary plates, the trash plate, where cigarette butts and chopstick wrappers sat with the remains. It was a mesmerizing process: tongues swiveling around bones, cleaned down to the last lick, the swiftness of their fingers and teeth at work.
By the end of the meal, everyone stared at me with their plates empty, and mine stacked with a tower of food. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?” “This is why you’re so thin!” “Don’t be polite, go ahead and eat!” I picked up my chopsticks, unsure of which meat to select. I lifted a curly slice of pork to my lips, parted them, and placed it on my tongue. I could feel the pig in a dark wet cave, waiting for what would come next. I planned to hold it hostage in my mouth before discretely spitting into my napkin. But the faces around me gleamed, waiting for me to have my fill. Family is for feeding you, to make sure you never go hungry. All they wanted was for me to feel full and happy. The difference between their rules and our rules, dinner on a plate or slaughtered meat, felt trivial sitting at a big round table that spun around at your whim. I closed my eyes and chewed, animal to animal. I could feel every string of meat pull apart. I chewed until all the flavor was sucked out. I ground it down to a clumpy pulp and swallowed, letting the pulverized meat fall to the wastelands of my stomach. The meat settled in my body, making a home for itself for the first time. I licked my lips.
Later, in the karaoke room, one of the older girl cousins sang a beautiful Chinese folk song and Yan Yu shed a tear. The boy cousins ordered more and more beer, requiring several waiters at a time to meet our demands. We drank so much that we got hungry again. The cousins ordered curry fish balls, lamb skewers, popcorn chicken. Yan Yu encouraged me to try a piece of each, and soon I was snacking on them mindlessly, forgetting any rules from home. Everyone lifted their glass: “Ganbei!” The cousins continued to drink cheerfully, linking arms as they sang choruses in unison. “Let’s do a song together,” I said to Yan Yu, sharing the urge to open my throat. We sang an English song at full volume, even though Yan Yu didn’t know a single lyric, and all the other cousins laughed with us. The song came to an end and we sat back down. Yan Yu wrapped her arm around me, squeezing my shoulder in a gesture of physical affection that felt very American somehow. A couple of the boys drunkenly sang a pop song, embarrassing their siblings. I was overflowing from the warmth of alcohol and family dinner, smiling and smiling.
All the beer and fruit wine had gone straight to my bladder, and I desperately needed to pee. I quickly excused myself from the karaoke room, promising to rush right back so I wouldn’t miss any of the fun. I ran around searching for the bathroom, but the floor was a maze. The building A.C. was relentless, overcompensating for summer outside. Wandering the hallways felt like walking through rows of a meat locker. A man in blue jeans passed by, likely a customer from another karaoke room who couldn’t help me. Then he called out my name in English. A layer of bumps coated my body like a plucked raw bird. I turned around, fearing it may be a relative I failed to recognize, with a name I wouldn’t know. But when I looked into the man’s eyes, I felt small and foolish. I had to turn away instantly.
“Are you Chris?” Once it had been said out loud, I was certain. “It’s been so long,” he said with open arms, mine stuck to my sides. “I’m glad I caught you here at karaoke, I didn’t have the appetite for a big Chinese dinner.” He gave off an unearned confidence that was new. “I heard you were visiting all summer. Are you homesick yet?” I brought up my restroom dilemma instead to hasten the conversation. He insisted on showing me the way himself, guiding me in accented English. “There are so many karaoke rooms here, finding the right door can be difficult.” He walked slightly behind me as we made our way through the halls, muted voices echoing all around us. Inside each room was a group of people we’d never see, singing songs I couldn’t know, shielded from anything that happened outside the world of karaoke. The longer we walked, the heavier I felt his breathing behind me. “So, you’ve been here before?” I said. “Oh yes, in high school,” he said, “with Yan Yu.” But tonight was her first time, she told me so. He led me to a hall with a single handicapped bathroom and opened the door for me.
His gaze lingered on me somewhere I didn’t recognize. At first, I thought he might yell at me in Chinese, and worried I wouldn’t understand everything he’d say. Then even more horrified, I imagined him trying to kiss me. But, with a grip that dug into my skin, he grabbed me by the shoulders, and violently shook me. He shook me back and forth as if trying to kill a baby. I really was a baby. The fruit wine and dead animals slushed inside me, ready to lurch out my mouth. The thought of these same hands holding Yan Yu made bile rise higher and higher in my throat. He lifted me up by my armpits, still grasping like he was afraid I might fall and crack my head. I dangled in the air, flailing my legs, trying to scream, but only confused gasps and tears came out. He spun me around once, and with that momentum threw me down onto the wet bathroom floor that reeked of urine. I hit the ground and felt a loud crack. My whole body burned, swallowing itself in flames. I could have fainted before anything else happened. But the door slammed behind him loudly, a prison gate locking us in. We were more alone than two people had ever been. The room was dark, moist, without an automatic light.
From the pits of my stomach, I managed to throw up a desperate scream. But the walls were built for karaoke, thick and soundproof. My bladder emptied itself from fear, wetting my legs, already damp from the floor. There was nothing left to expel, nothing left to feel but fear for my life. There are a thousand ways to be violated, consumed—I had thought of all these ways before. Now I was forced to feel each one out, imagining what would become of my body, whichever he chose.
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I remembered what it felt like to be safe and dry, how much you take it for granted when you are. It takes hours to get across a small stretch of Texas, much less efficient than a bullet train. But you can tell your parents to turn down the A.C. because now it’s too cold inside the car. You can roll the windows down to feel the hot wind whip against your fingers instead and remember how much better it is to be in here than out there. How much nicer it feels to be an American family, driving on the inside, not part of whatever world lies beyond. It’s the same flat, yellow land the whole ride long. On an eventful day you might pass a herd of dairy cows. Last time we visited Texas, my mother let me drive the car alone for the first time. I was tasked with a solo mission to the grocery store and returned home with more hot dogs for the grill. Later, in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, I went out to drive again. Billboard lights turned on, boasting the same ads for attorneys, church services, amusement parks, illuminated mainly to keep drowsy drivers from drifting off road. I didn’t know where to go or why I was going, just that this was something adults did: go for a drive. You drive to try and dissect what it is you’re feeling, or craving. The plains were gray and even emptier at night, enormously empty, like they took up the whole world. I could feel it, the rules and constraints becoming smaller and smaller. And whatever it was you wanted, all that you could be, growing bigger and bigger. The sparse red lights from distant highways and radio towers made small things stand out more in the dark. That’s how I saw him, running up ahead as my car approached from the side. The shape of what could only be a man, further out in the field to my right, open pasture, ravenous. And even further before him, a woman’s form, or more likely a girl’s, running from him. I slowed the car, but only enough to catch a glimpse and see that she was missing an arm. He was trying to catch her, pin her down, hold onto her. She tried too, to hold onto herself, to find refuge from inside her own body. But none existed, especially not in there. It was our own failure, to think we could get away with it. We may as well have been born just for this. I drove off, but not so fast that I couldn’t hear. I heard the sounds of wailing. And if hunger had a sound, I heard that too. I recognized it before I ever felt it myself, before it was even mine.
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Chris cradles me, one hand supporting my back, the other cupping my tailbone. He digs his face into my stomach, plunging his teeth into my flesh, breaking skin, tearing through meat. He takes a big bite of my belly and eats me. Rice, noodles, vegetables, ice cream, tea, liquor, birds, fish, animals, organs, blood. Flesh that is mine. Flesh that was not mine. This is what you will find when you go looking inside me. It wasn’t enough just to stop being hungry. I wanted to be filled to the brim, leaking, spilling over with more than meat. My eyes were too big for my stomach. All those made-up rules weren’t so important—I’m not either, I know. But I realize now that I wanted to be. I could have been better if I was something else, something to miss. I might have tasted better then. I should have been delicious. He chews and chews.
