Assorted Poetry

symbiosis

If you ask your doctor, they will tell you that parasites are normal. You come with a list of symptoms: an aching twisting in your gut, dizziness that makes you faint, nauseating hunger beyond belief. Distractibility, racing heart, fever. Your hair is falling out, everything smells weird, you've got a sore throat and a lost voice. Internal bleeding. External bleeding. Missing limbs. The things this parasite has done to your body have twisted it out of any recognisable shape, such that there's a stranger in the mirror, this anemic ghost who doesn't quite fit your name. But the doctor laughs, and says everyone has a parasite. Take some ibuprofen. We can do cognitive behavioural therapy, if you think that'll help.

So you've got a parasite. You've had it your whole life. Sickening, red and pulsating, wet and gurgling mouth foaming at the taste of fresh meat. This thing writhes within you, wrapped through your guts so tight it strangles your intestines. Parasites are normal, so you're told, and that ache of this horrific monster gnawing through your flesh deep in the pit of your stomach- well, that's to be celebrated. You're growing up. Your parasite is getting hungry. You should feed it. The only thing it eats is human flesh.

I don't know about you, but I'm a vegetarian. I've never been a huge fan of meat. The eagerness with which others stuck fingers inside the teeth-lined saw trap of a gaping maw carved into my body, well, it's never sat right by me. I, for one, do not like the voracious invader that has made its home under my skin. I, for one, would starve it out.

I was thirteen when I met someone who felt the same. He told me once, under the cover of blankets at a sleepover, that he wished to be whole, that he wished to take back what the parasite had stolen from him. He told me it could be removed. For a hundred thousand dollars, in a foreign land, they'd cut you open, slice out the tendrils it had laid deep into your stomach, into your chest. With years of recovery, you could get back the pounds of muscle and blood it had eaten from you already. You could be remade, alone. It could be done.

That wasn't why I fell in love with him. That was the fault of a shooting star. But together, we worked to kill my parasite for good.

You see, the creature that lived within his guts was just as hungry as mine. And by cutting myself open, and feeding his parasite pieces of mine- nothing human was lost, and the twisting in my stomach would slowly begin to die. It was painful, to take the blade in my hands, to slice open my abdomen, to reach within myself, my fingers dripping with gore, and to take pieces of this alien hunger- and feed them to him. Blood dripping into the waiting maw, chunks of flesh and viscera cleaned off my fingers, slick drool that stained my skin permanently, even when I had scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. When my parasite bled, it looked a lot like my blood, but I knew the end was in sight. One day I'd be rid of the horrible thing that had plagued me my whole life; one day he'd swallow the last of me whole, and I would be nothing but human. No animal would exist within me; there would be no hunger ever again. If I fed him enough of me- sorry, excuse me, enough of my parasite- I would be finally happy.

When I could reach no deeper, when I could not get to the deepest roots within me to pluck out a new chunk of flesh for the meal, he would do it himself. I had never felt such agony as him hollowing me out, scrabbling for every last morsel, sniffing out where the last pieces of my flesh remained, where my parasite hid within the cavity of my body. He would find it. He would bleed me dry, he would have every last drop of me, he'd eat his fill and then some, his gluttony his birthright. He was born with a parasite, and at some point I recognised that its tendrils were locked into his heart, into his brain. By the time I knew I was not in love with a man, but the demon spawn that puppeted him, I had given too much of my flesh. I was already carrion for him, already consumed. I would let him pick at my bones. Maybe, at least, if he did that, my parasite would die. So would I, but that was beside the point.

When there was nothing left to eat of me, he left my body on the side of the road and searched for more food.

I lay there in the dark, chewed through, in excruciating pain from every torn muscle and sinew. I could not stand. I could barely breathe, coughing up blood with each weak rattle of my chest. I knew death was coming, and yet... And yet, I was so, so hungry.

My parasite, shrunken and silent and surely dead, was shuddering those same weak breaths. And despite everything I'd done to it, it was still. Fucking. Hungry.

It was simply insatiable.

I had been left to die, all alone. What I noticed, dashed on that pavement, bleeding out, was that I was not alone. Not when my parasite's little heart beat alongside mine, shared each breath with me, and asked, not for organs deep within a dead body, not for entire limbs ripped with ferocious teeth from screaming victims. Just... a little meat, happily shared. All it asks for is a morsel, freely given. A drop of blood cut from a hand. The flesh you are willing to part with, and no more.

I dragged myself to my feet and limped for help. The speed with which I was surrounded by soft hands, loving words, caring helpers asking why I was bleeding so heavily, helping me bandage my wounds- and asking if I was hungry.

I asked if it was wrong to feed my parasite, and with shaking hands, they told me that the gaping maw was mine. This alien thing was a part of me. To reject its hunger, to reject my own- that I'd cut open my stomach and torn out organs to try and take something from myself. I was already whole. The hunger was mine. I tried to tell them it had a mind of its own, and they shushed me and said- you feel its hunger, don't you? You know its needs as yours?

I felt my hollowed-out stomach and cried.

Now my wounds are stitched, and I have never eaten so well in my life.