The Nature is the Beast and we--

I met you

in my closet, lost, forgot, and stuffed away

like skeletons tend to be.

You looked up with plaster face

and proved that you had nothing to hide

under think, deceitful fat.

No reason to lie about your bony build.

You were the first I'd ever seen

without even sheet-thin skin to

wrap you in a stupid story.

Being cloaked in flesh

suddenly felt like being naked.



I scrutinized safely from the doorway.

I became an anatomist.

I learned your insides and outs.

I could name everything that you were--

femur, fibula, tibula,

elbows and ribs and skulls--

and you watched without a care

and I came and sat down beside you in the shadows.



Permanent residence in a closet.

We sat in the shade for weeks, months,

never eating,

anorexic of the grimy

hormone-based shit

that they served outside.

Slowly letting all the fat

drip

off

as we fed our bones instead of our mouths.



Until you saw a girl like an apple

juicy, coveted

wrapped in a rust-red skin

out on the furthest limb.

You nudged me aside to stand up,

bones creaking satanically, like

claws inside the walls in a horror film,

like a sound for which I was afraid to have an explanation.

You left the closet

to go vie for bite after bite.

I watched from the doorway

as you were knocked away from the tree

by plump, greedy men

and you took bites of them.



Skeleton who became a cannibalistic glutton,

I watched you get fat.



I watched

as you binged without a care

until

finally

I stood up

and left the shade

and walked as far uphill as my bones could take me.



I hate that you got skin

but I'm glad you took mine.