The Feed

I used to hunger. The type of hunger that shakes you deep in your bones, and spreads through your entire body until your whole existence is nothing but the crave. My hunger was never physical, but still it remained. And I felt it, deep and aching in rot.

And the insects, they feed. They hunger like me. And they sing ever so sweet their song of crawl and itch.

I don't know when i first heard their song. Maybe it was the first time I let an ant crawl on my fingertip, or when I felt the first spider egg sac chitter and convulse in my palm. Maybe I always heard it, and I just had to be ready to let it consume me.

But oh, do they feed. And oh, do the maggots burrow. I can feel them itch and wretch and wriggle through my flesh and envelop me in their love. I can feel their itching rot over every inch of my flesh, every moment a new ecstasy. My skin is a patchwork of holes and tunnels that they feed and infest in me. The ooze drips ever so slowly out of every pore in which I am covered, and I relish every second of my bliss.

They feed, and they feed, and they feed, until nothing is left but rotting perfection. They feed on my sallow skin that peels like the oily membrane snaking off a chicken bone. They feed on my blood, on my pus, on my discrepancy. They feed on me until I am hollow. Until I am sacred. 

I am the congregation of thousands of minds and bodies that worship me as their sustainer. They will make me new again.

 
I do not remember who I was before the feed. I do not think I want to. My past does not matter now, for I am consecrated. I live for the burrow.

I am the tunnels in which they walk

They crawl

They skitter

I am the burial grounds in which they rest

They die

They infest

I am the wasps nest in the attic that thrums with buzz

I am the spider's web that coats the walls with corpse and drip

I am the ants that crawl in the corners of the concrete sidewalk under the feet we tread

I am the swarm.

I feel their love pulsate through me like a beating heart in shudders.

I feel them singing to me so sweetly

Can you hear their song

I look at my reflection in a hand mirror
I am a living hive
I smile, but no teeth or tongue or lips are left to do so
Only the burrow

I do not hunger anymore