She eats me every night.
Bite by bite.
Starting with my feet, ending with my heart.
I enter another world.
There, the sky is the color of flesh, the earth breathes, and there are two gravestones.
One bears her name.
The other bears mine.
In the morning, she wakes and asks me, “Did you sleep well last night?”
I say, “Pretty well.”
She knows I'm lying to myself.
I know she's lying to herself.
Because there's someone else living between us.
That person only appears at two in the morning.
That person says, “I've waited for you for thirteen hundred years.”
You want to know where I am now?
I'm lying beside her. Moonlight slips through the curtains.
She's asleep. Her breathing is soft. There's a faint smile at the corner of her mouth.
She's the her from the daytime, and the her from the nighttime.
I can't tell them apart.
But there's a new note on the bedside table.
It has only three words:
Do you remember?
I can't remember.
But I know that tomorrow night,
she'll eat me again.
I'll go in again.
I'll touch those two gravestones again.
I'll see that kneeling figure sobbing again.
That figure looks like me.
