I'll Pick Your Bones

At the start, I only ever wanted a sliver
of you, of yourself; your flesh.
It was innocent enough and I believed it to be so.

I wanted a little more, then. Hoped it would satisfy.
But I was wrong.
O, far more so than I should ever admit.

My stomach, tight with want, I took a step over the line.
There wasn’t any going back
after that.

I pushed and you failed to fight, so I pushed some more.
Fevered momentum threatened
to ruin it all.

A hunger that I had failed to notice before, this hunger,
he took both hands and placed them tight against my wrists.
I did things I thought impossible.

Then I pushed more. Harder.
Until I could feel that there was very little
left of you.

I could stop the want, no longer.
Nor the force with which I had resigned myself to taking.
Pilfering all of it without apology.

But by that point you were too far gone to notice,
as I pulled back your skin to see inside.
Searching to find what I ached for.

Cutting away at the sinew.
You could have screamed, though I was deaf
with determination.

I saw my need before me, manifested.
And I thought
of nothing else.

Layer after layer of your worldly, organic self
fell down to my feet.
And here we are, now.

I push my fingers into your old wounds.
I rip them open, search for truths; answers.
For God.

Your pain is nothing to me.
I convince myself that it sets you
free.

I grab hold, struggle to retract another portion of reality.
You wince as I tear shreds from that
which is yours.

It’s almost over.
I pick your bones.
And you let me.