Save Our Soulsickened
by Adriana Tosun
If we must pick sins, then, let gluttony be mine: I know the hot shame of it well, the pour of wine and honey from the nostrils, the grit left between teeth after the apple skin has rotted away. The dirt under my toenails is filigreed in gold, and I've dreamt for years of verdant cowardice; but for all my excesses, I would rather gorge myself on bony particulars, the fresh slice of knife-edged disgust. And as my belly swells with proof of a vast and ancient hatred, I'll swallow yet more, fold the seeds of the universe into the crease of a thigh, the delicate interior curl of an ear. I can bear no longer the empty marrow-pockets; forsake me, take a rib and bind it with the dusty carcass of a pomegranate. Damned, I'd expect. Desiccated.
Adriana Tosun is currently living on a boat. She has most recently been published in Defenestration Magazine, Corvus Magazine, and Parody Poetry Journal, and has work pending in Strange Horizons. Once, in the streets of Paris, she ate a handful of red currants; they have been her favorite fruit ever since.
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