I feel my body respond – micro-relaxations, the lure of ease.
I clench my fists and refuse it.
I cross to the table and pick up a biscuit. It crumbles slightly between my fingers. Real enough.
I hold it for a moment, then set it down again untouched.
Because this room is not for feeding me.
It is for feedingonme.
I sit in the chair and force my breathing to remain steady without becoming soft. There is a difference. Steady is controlled. Soft is surrendered.
I stare at the framed landscape and memorise it – the impossible hills, the painted stream – because I know what comes next.
They will send someone else.
If not Lena, then another face. Another voice. Another carefully chosen vulnerability.
They will keep pulling at the part of me that reaches out.
They will reward it until it becomes reflex.
Then they will punish it until it dies.
And when it dies, they will call it progress.
I press my hand flat against my chest, feeling my heart beat, stubborn and alive.
I whisper, so quietly the microphones might miss it, “You don’t get to take that.”
The room hums, as if amused.
The warm air thickens again, sweetening, coaxing.
I close my eyes and do the only thing I can do in a place like this.
I make my kindness a weapon by denying it to them.
And I wait for the next lie.
BLOOD UNDER MY FINGERNAILS
Desire - Meg Myers
Kookaburra
I’m back in bed, wrapped in his arms. The world outside feels distant, softened at the edges, but he’s here – solid, vivid, electric. His chest presses against mine, heat and weight, his breath steady on my cheek. Fingers trace lazy lines down my spine and my skin sings with it.
Dim light spills across tangled sheets. I melt into him, pulse tripping.
Then another touch.
Feather-light, sliding along my arm.
A second warmth behind me, body pressing to my back, breath against the base of my neck. Two of them now – one in front, one behind – each mapping me like they’ve always known the terrain. One mouth at my throat, the other at myshoulder. Teeth. Tongues. A rhythm that makes sense in some buried part of me.
I can’t tell whose hands are whose anymore. Someone’s fingers tangle in my hair, tugging just enough to arch my neck back. The other’s palm slides down my stomach, dipping lower with deliberate slowness. I gasp, caught between them, suspended in sensation.
