a body is an archive: unveiled
when i stumbled open--
claw-click, serrate-jaw,
wet antennae mapping paths i had never known.
skin, then flesh, then
(oh—how the soft explodes)
a threshold becomes a feast,
& i was alive for it.

they sang in that minor key,
the one tuned for
half-breaths.
sinews hummed electric as
the burrow began--
an architecture of frenzied mouths
churning absence into corridors,
each passage alive with the memory
of something never buried.

and is this not the nature of hunger?
to make the once-firm
a slurry of purpose?
they never meant to unravel
all i held,
but the burrow was me now.
(to be remade is to perish inside out.)

what the insects did not take
were pieces too sharp to swallow:
a wrist pressed to pulse--
the wrist itself forgotten;
an eye, emptied of meaning,
but still watching--
watching even as the body became
a hymn sung low
in thorax vibrations.

and there was no end.
no death.
no quiet.
only their small & perfect hands
reaching
(yes, always reaching)
for the marrow,
for the root of whatever i had been.

what remained was not myself.
but the insects
were full.