The Title Decomposed Before I Could Think Of It

     How revolting that I must exist like this! This cage of meat... This sweating, seething, sagging mass of weakness. 

     My flesh offends me. It leaks, it bruises, it clings, it bleeds when bitten and swells when shamed. I bite my nails until I bloom red, peel the skin from my lips like old wallpaper, dig crescents into my arms just to confirm I’m here. That I’m not merely a tumor that’s grown teeth.

     My body insists on being alive, doesn’t it? A stubborn parasite. It digests, it perspires, it decays in microscopic dramas I can’t even see. Cells suiciding in waves, skin fermenting beneath its own surface. I think of maggots and envy their hunger, at least they know what they’re meant for. To clean, consume, and conclude.

     Sometimes, I think the kindest thing I could do is to start consuming myself. Chew through my sins first, then move inward. Gnaw the fingers that type this, swallow the skin that won’t stay smooth, devour myself before the world does. Before the wolves, before the worms, before the well-meaning.

     The human body is a bad habit I can’t quit. I was never meant to be clean. Flesh is faithful only to its rot. Even as I scrub it, it festers. Even as I breathe, it breaks. It molds itself into mortality, mercilessly meticulous in its slow surrender.

     And still, I must carry it. I dress it up, I pretend this carcass is a costume, that this decay is divine design. Pretend I’m proud to have been born a banquet.