When they ate me alive,

I asked them to go slow.

Asked them to please relish my pain,

**** my marrow as if I was served at at the finest restaurant

where waiters speak in hushed voices and

the lights are dim and

the menu is fixed, is twelve courses long,

is exactly what you want.

I asked them to go slow.

I asked them to read my palms to tell me how long I had to live,

I asked them to forgive me,

to let me forgive others,

to tell the girl from high school who faked a pregnancy in front of the entire school and me,

her best friend,

tell her that she can be safe in her own head,

and it takes time,

and no one is going to eat her alive.

I asked them to renounce my baptism,

to tell my pastor I only wanted to dip in that warm water and feel all the attention on me.

I was seven,

it was the same year as 9/11.

I knew the Bible,

but can you tell them I just wanted to get in the bathtub, to float?

Maybe I wanted to be saved,

but now savor this instead,

this

subverting honesty,

these verses of

plain, plain

muscle vein ligament stretch, skin collagen fat scars freckles bones bones bones,

savor this.

I am as human as I will ever be,

and I’ve got stories that can make you whistle,

can make you curl your toes,

can make your ears practically salivate at the thought.

Can you wait?

Savor me, take small parts of me,

but as you’re eating me alive

please remember that I am a bathtub

and a book

and I’m barely written or read and I need something like

time to write myself finished.

I’m not done yet.

This is a plea.