cw: self-harm, gore
there is a beautiful ugly thing growing inside of you
you don’t remember when you first noticed it:
it got its claws in you early, you suspect,
considering you don’t even really remember what life was like before it,
and that it’s so mixed in with the pain and the joy of
your life
that you can hardly separate it from yourself at this point
it started off small, with chewed off slivers of fingernails and bloody tissues from a nosebleed
dropped into the hole you dug below the great grasping tree,
and you buried them in the cold hard earth to never be seen again
you aren’t even sure why you started,
it just felt right
to drop these little pieces of yourself where no one would ever find them,
wrapped in layers of dirt and soil and run through by the worms and the mushrooms
the thing inside you grew each time you fed it, and with it a hunger you felt deep in your bones
and before long fingernails and drops of blood weren’t enough to sate its hunger
so you had to go farther
and farther
you slit your wrists open
exposed the pretty pink meat beneath
and carried your life’s blood in little plastic cups
and emptied those cups over the roots of the tree
above your hole
the tree eagerly drank your life
and the thing inside you did too
the years passed
you kept at your rituals
and the tree changed with you
its bark grew warm, its leaves turned red in the middle of the summer
and at night its limbs on your windows made you think of fingers
reaching
grasping
straining
for you
you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror one day
and the shape of your face made you want to vomit
and you thought of your tree, and the thing inside you
and in your desperation to feed its hunger
you took out your old friend, your blade,
and took off your finger at the second joint,
took it to the hole,
and buried it
under the tree
in the weeks after
the tree thrived
the veins in the leaves reminded you
of the veins you opened to feed it
the meat under its bark
looked just like yours
and all the while the thing inside you
began to writhe
the next time the urges took you
you tried to give another fingertip
but you knew that it wasn’t enough
you went to the hardware store
and bought a machete, shiny and clean
and with a thrill and a sigh
you gave it your arm
cut neatly at the elbow
and buried it too
you staggered to bed
bleeding and dizzy
the tree grew that night
its boughs pushed through your window
and into your room
its leaves brushed your face
like the caress of a lover
and its branches bit into your skin
the tree drank you dry
and all the while
the thing inside you
fought back
somehow, somewhy
isn’t this what it wanted?
didn’t it want you to give?
the tree leaned in
and you saw your own face
staring back at you
from the branch
the tree made a sound
that sounded like your voice
and a limb stabbed into your chest
it came out dry
with a writhing mass of brackish meat
impaled on the end
and the thing inside you
was quiet for good
the tree dragged you from your window
down into your hole
and buried you with its leaves
leaves that felt like skin
branches that felt like bone
wood that felt like meat
as it pushed the dirt over your corpse
and the worms burrowed through your skin
you felt yourself changing too
your bones became bark
your skin became leaves
your meat became wood
and you grew
out from your hole
Cambria's Corner 
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