The kitchen smells like a secret I forgot to bury. A peach gone soft, skin splitting like a bad promise. The fruit flies know something I don’t; they’re the last priests of a dying faith, and they’re waiting for me to leak.
I tell myself I’m healing, but last night I dreamt I had to eat your heart to survive. It tasted like burnt sugar and nail polish remover. I woke up gasping, your name soldered to the roof of my mouth like a curse I didn’t mean to cast.
I call it the trick of wanting: how I keep looking for your fingerprints in places you never touched, how I flinch when someone says my name in the dark, how I let the mirror watch me shatter and pretend I’m a stained glass window.
Here’s the part I shouldn’t post: I liked it when you lied to me. I liked it when you said this isn’t about love and I let you mean it’s about power.
The fruit flies keep coming. I pretend they’re a sign from God. I pretend they’re angels. Or demons. Never both. I pretend they’re a reminder that sweetness is just another word for rot. I pretend the buzzing is the sound of my name- fermenting in your guts, putrefying in your chest, decomposing in your memory like abandoned fruit.
I know I shouldn’t write this. But I do. Because I want you to see it. Because I want you to flinch.
Because I want you to know: I am the girl who would eat your heart if I could. I would peel it open with my teeth, lick the blood off my lips, smile like a god in a red dress, and call it love.