poker aftermath

I passed out on the fangs of the deadliest creature I know, and yet tomorrow I will wake up.

Why?

I’m unconscious so I can’t see your expression. Are you regretful when you kiss my wound closed? How much of you wants me to live, and how much wants to consume me? Are you 80/20? 49/51? Has it changed over time?

Do you barter yourself off me with a compromise of slipping out into the night and assuaging your blood thirst on the life of another? Does my still being here mean that someone didn’t get home last night?

Perhaps you smile tenderly at me. You play your cards so close to your chest, Raven. I have enough love for the both of us, but in the moments where I’m asleep or flirting with death, do you sit with me and stroke my hair? I do know I’ll wake with a large bottle of water and a blanket on me. You take care of me.

It’s so strange: when you feed on me my whole awareness focuses to a knife’s edge. We fulfill my life’s purpose. But as you feed, inevitably, I become fuzzy. Drink too much and everything goes black. If you ate me whole, I would black out long before your body would be done with me. That blackness haunts me. I want to feed you, but your hunger will someday lay a black shroud over everything I once was.

I should be scared. But the beauty of it—of being ended by your digestive processes, sucked up and used by you—brings literal tears to my eyes.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up, and might weep for the bittersweet gift of another day outside you.