I set the table like I was told.
Two forks left, knife right, heart in the center—beating politely, still.
Coherence laced with delirium.
A surreal spine that writhes but holds.
The vessel is never quite right. Too soft. Too breakable. They keep crawling from form to form—new faces, new hearts, new teeth (crooked, sharp, never enough). The world is a haunted museum of discarded selves, and they walk its halls on clockwork legs. You, the viewer, are offered a seat at the dining table. On the plate: the last body. Half-eaten. Still breathing.
The centipede arrived wearing my grandmother’s pearls.
It clacked across the mahogany, a hundred legs like impatient silverware.
Its eyes were convex mirrors, convex memories.
I could see every version of myself inside them. One was bleeding. One was learning ballet. One was dead but smiling.
“Are you here for dinner?” I asked, wringing my napkin into a noose.
It didn’t answer. Just clicked. I took that as a yes.
You are part of a sickeningly sweet program: hugs, treats, smiles. But you’re leaking red syrup down your arms. There’s something wrong under the pastel frosting. Everyone is just pretending not to notice. You wake up with bite marks in your skin that aren’t your own. A roly-poly rolls out of your mouth. Centipedes curl up in the sugar bowl. Maybe the love was never real. Maybe it was. Either way, you’re dessert now.
After coffee, the centipede offered me a tooth.
It pulsed like an idea, raw and waiting.
Somewhere in the walls, the machinery began to hum again.
Somewhere in the mirror, my spine curled into question marks.
Elderberry, blueberry, enternal return. ___ was everything. ____ was everything. ___ was everything. Centipedes crawling. Click- clack. Time ticking backwards. Eyes like a clock. Statues driven in arch and stone. Blood on my hands. ____ just shot themselves. ____ was every moment. ___ was every moment. Is that a dismembered body? Asphalt. Iris. It’s a pretty color I can’t describe. Here’s a dining table, here’s my heart on a platter. Venus flytrap. Eat, sleep, eat again. Sickening, sickening behavior. Sick. Sleep. Seethe. Have you hugged ___ today? Did they cut you up like cake? So sweet, my dear saccharine. Sick. Sick. Roly-poly, roll on carpets today. Be still my clockwork heart. Machinery of tickering crickets. Your teeth will never feel sharp enough. One is crooked. There’s a taste of vodka but I never drink. The weakness of ___ is that they think they have and actually believe all the information they receive and react accordingly. Not to brace. To slip down the mirrored staircase before they even realize they’re falling. ___ said they had to abandon their last body because they fell of the stairs and broke their bones. Haha, ___ no longer has any faith in their bones because of the last incident. The vessel is too soft. One orders milkshake the other, diet soda. Hm, ____ believes they have tasted all sorts of exotic mushrooms. Here in the museum where all light is made from your collarbones and the palm of your hand trembling to hold even a shard of the prism. Lately I’ve been waiting for my body, to feel like a body. It is heavy. Will we have anatomy lessons with ____? Hm? ___ have been coughing elderberry on the stage. Guardian¡ Dig deep and delve. 42. Plow with a shovel and hit it back with a tennis racket. 12. Stick and shove. Dig deep. Keep going.
Soup course: regret consommé.
Main course: dream-meat from someone I used to kiss.
Dessert: a single blueberry, floating in milk, whispering the word iris every time I blinked.
They display your ribs as chandeliers. Someone has mistaken your blood for paint and spilled it across the floor in spirals. The curators whisper when they walk. You think they used to be your friends. You think the gift shop is selling your old smile. And in the basement? Well, that’s a secret. Or maybe you knew but buried it deep into the marrow of you bones. Only your blood will, even if you try not to think of it at all. Sickeningly, achingly, sweet.
I set the table like I was told.
The table told me to set myself.
The table set me like each of my organs on a platter.
The spoon cradled my tongue. The knife hummed lullabies to my ribs.
The napkin dabbed at a memory I didn’t remember having.
Each glass raised a toast to a different version of me.
I clinked back, politely.
The menu changed daily, but I was always the entrée.
The soup tasted like apologies. The wine, like regret I hadn’t earned.
The centerpiece was my body, redressed. Sometimes floral. Sometimes seasonal.
I used to think I was the guest.
I used to think I had a chair.
Now I think I am the chair.
Four limbs, upholstered in skin I borrowed from somewhere softer.
“I used to have a body,” I said conversationally, sipping the silence.
The centipede brushed its mandibles with a napkin made from my childhood blanket.
“I used to think time went one way.”
Then my grandfather’s clock started chiming. Huh?
It unhinged its jaw and vomited a staircase.
At the bottom was the gun.
At the top was my name, spelled wrong but ringing true.
The table remembers what I forgot to bury.
The table remembers where all my tears had fallen.
It knew me, but I didn’t know _____.
Yet underneath this lightbulb hanging on this dining table, with each smiles plastered on the guests face, ( Don’t smile. ) it knew me, just as in which placemat was assigned and settled.
“I want to be reborn,” I said.
“You’re too soft,” it said.
You are reliving the same evening over and over. A dinner party. Something always dies. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s the cake. Statues in the walls watch you with clockwork eyes. Something clicks under the floorboards. There’s always a centipede. It always comes when the clock strikes backwards. You begin to suspect the house is alive. It feeds on guests. It serves you your own heart every course.
2087
gummygunk
ellievsbear
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
