my religion
Today you had important work to do, but you still made the time to come see me. Even just a quick wrap of your arms from behind as I chopped onions in the kitchen—you could tell I appreciated it by the softening of my shoulders. Even despite the way I had to arch backwards to mould around your belly, the way it squished into my back.
Grief does weird things to me. I sing a lot: snatches of songs that merge with other songs, or use a different tune, or are transposed to a minor key. Repetition features heavily. It’s like the normally harnessed associative cascade of thoughts has been granted access to my vocal chords and the editor switched off. During intense meditation work you have to tune it out with music.
At dinner time there’s a deferent knock at your door.
“Mm?” you say, pulled up from a break. Jelly babies featured, but nothing risque.
“Dinner is served.”
You rock yourself eagerly to your feet and open your door. I’m standing outside with a smile, a bamboo staff in one hand, and a few bolts of rope in the other. “Wanna be blasphemous?”
Your expression melts from shock into a wry smile. “I still get fed, right?”
So I crucify you.
The first step is to undress. You fix me with a gaze that would melt the heart out of anyone who hadn’t already given it to you, and I hold that gaze while I step close. We could kiss, but instead I pull your casual T-shirt over your head, hands easing it over your belly and the folds that spontaneously develop under compression by the fabric. Eye contact breaks as it passes over your head, and I take care not to snag your long hair as I pull it through.
Half-dressed. I love it when you’re half-dressed. My heart gains ten BPM. Something about the restriction and containment of clothes contrasting the flowing, rounded sensuality of your naked form. Still, I want you naked. I kneel and roll your leggings down your legs, hooking panties with them.
A glance up at you, meeting an intense gaze just visible over the belly that hangs like heavy like a threat, soft like a promise… Another ten BPM put me in fat-burning cardio range.
Still, I stand and turn you with a hand on your shoulder.
Being tied is something you’ve grown more used to. I draw up your hand behind you and loop together a safe single-column, testing to make sure it won’t tighten under strain and cut off your wrist’s circulation. Then I guess your hand out to the side and step close enough that the bamboo is clamped horizontal between us. The rope is stitched along your arm to the bamboo: loop, 90 degree turn held by a twisted friction, tie off; same again. The result by the time I’ve used that bolt of rope is that your arm is bound rigid to the pole by regularly spaced loops of pale jute rope, linked by a running strand. I take your other hand and perform the symmetric manoeuvre.
You are in T-pose.
With startling firmness I form a fist in your hair and angle your head back. The tension in your shoulders forces the bamboo pole back. You can feel the stretch in your pecs; when your chest expands to take in a restricted breath, your breasts ride higher.
My voice in your ear is tight, controlled. “I worship you, Raven.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
A nip on your ear is my response. Then I’m smoothing your hair back behind the pole. “Feels appropriate given the timbre of my thoughts.”
I don’t make you have to stand: I’ve already painstakingly lashed a tall bamboo pole to your usual chair. I guide you to it and set you down with upright pole against your spine. When I rope the two poles together this means your chest is open, breasts proud but large enough they sit on a shelf formed by your wonderful round belly. Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you sat with legs apart. Your gut makes a V where it hangs in the gulf between your titanic thighs.
The first course is already on the table. Am actual salad. I’m clearly feeling ironic.
“‘How Great Thou Art,’” I begin, enigmatically, as I present a generous forkful of leaves, shredded beetroot and still-warm lamb to your perfect lips. You angle your head to rock your jaws around it, the forkful being a little too wide to elegantly place within your mouth. A sweet and sharp pomegranate dressing lightens your palate as I explain. “It was a line in a song I listened to. Struck me. It’s the name of a hymn that gets played at a lot of funerals.”
You listen patiently. Patience is required: I leave long pauses between mouthfuls, seeming to be focused intently on your mouth, the way you swallow. The salad disappears without issue. Barely an appetizer for you. I dab your lips with a napkin and turn to finish the next course.
“I googled the lyrics. Knew the broad idea, but I’m no church-goer.” You watch my back as I pour a ready-made sauce into a pan, heat it, turn a great mound of cooked tagliatelle over and over in it.
The plate that sits streaming, awaiting consumption, is good old carbonara. Unctuous creamy sauce coats a very generous serving of pasta. I finish it with parmesan and pepper.
“The whole story is about bigging up God,” I continue, twisting pasta around a fork and delivering it to your lips. You take it eagerly. Your stomach has realised we’re going for it, and the feeling of rumbling seems to be making your ears pop somehow. “The awe is palpable. And I could only read it one way.”
From memory I recite, while delivering nest after best of comfort into your wide-open mouth.
“Oh Lord, my God / When I, in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder Thy power throughout the universe displayed
“Now,” I continue, scooping up a little extra sauce on the next mouthful while you lick your lips clean, “I don’t know if you have ever built worlds. But I picture you with a court you attract and tame. I picture you ensnaring and ruling. If others create, you then own and control and consume.” My eyes go distant. The latest forkful waves in front of you, slightly too far away. Your hands flex at the ends of their rope cages. You can’t move for the cross of bamboo. “You could subsume creators entirely, first their works, then their whole being.”
Service resumes. You chew appreciatively. The carbonara is half gone already, and disappears into your tum entirely by the time I finish thinking.
The plate disappears and I open the oven. Hearty stew, must be a gallon of the stuff, fragrant with herbs. The whole thing comes back with me to the table.
“The next stanza, I can’t quite make fit. Maybe… But here it is:
“And when I think that God, His Son not sparing Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing He bled and died to take away my sin.
“It’s a rebirth as a human. I suppose… You’re here. You’re not where you belong: as something greater.” There are dumplings. I’ve never cooked you them before. But I know you’re not a fan of soft food textures: these dumplings are charred on top, adding a pleasant toasted note to sage, thyme and bay. Good old slow-cooked beef competes with a medley of root veg. I compose you a big spoonful of part of everything. You glomph on it straight away and basically swallow it direct. How is this making you hungrier?
“I’m not sure what burden of mine you might be bearing. But I do know that whatever sins your prey committed are burned away with them. Yours is their final benediction as they lose themselves in you. I don’t know how you bled and died for me, but you came by your fangs somehow?”
My expression is slightly pained. It’s not an idea I wish to dwell upon. The sight of you chugging down three or four spoonfuls of stew cheers me up immediately, though.
We enter a rhythm. There is actually a ludicrous amount of stew. With your arms behind you we get to see how your midsection begins to swell with it. Maybe that’s why I tied you like this.
I sing the next verse, quietly, with a strange look on my face. At this point you don’t care so long as the food keeps coming. You wince as a gurgle indicates a knot of tension somewhere deep inside, but you don’t even think of stopping.
“When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart Then I shall bow, in humble adoration…”
—I fix you with a very direct look—
“And then proclaim, my God, how great Thou art.
“I mean… It’s a hell of a thing to say, isn’t it?” The food greed haze begins to lift. Somehow the stew pot is almost empty. I fish around for more beef for you. “Is it too much to call you my god in fact? People don’t normally literally spoonfeed their gods. Although,” I smirk and thrust the spoon between begging lips, “I did burn a tray of jam tarts, earlier. Burnt offerings are a thing, aren’t they? Oh, it’s done.”
I lean forward to massage your tummy. Immediately you become aware of a hot red stretch in your stomach as it copes with the influx. Seeing your pained expression I go lighter, take my time, rifle my hands delicately through your inner topology of fat. By now I think I can identify banks of fat as distinct anatomical areas, as clear as muscles. Perhaps I’m imagining it. But the fat over your ribs is so much softer than that on the top of your abdominal swell; and where your belly shades your crotch you are even softer.
One little creak inside your gut gives way to a glorious avalanche of gurgles and bubbling noises, gas and liquid squeezing past one another in your secret pipes. The look of bliss on your face tells me you’re ready for more.
“I don’t think I could mourn anyone you took,” I say, without elaboration or context. I return with a deep tray of pineapple upside-down cake. You lean forward, expectant.
“I’d convert everyone to my religion,” I say as a syrupy, fluffy forkful finds its way to that place of worship: the cathedral vaults of your hard palate, the deep dark sepulchre of your belly, that has claimed a thousand bodies and yet more souls. “And you: my most divine Raven; you queen of worlds beyond this one, and you avatar of excess and beauty and wild, wild hunger:
“You would convert them to fat.”