you want to feel special,

that is what you always told me, anyway. that if you found some way to be special, to appear special, to soak up all of the specificities of the world and embody them all, that you would then feel complete and whole.

you told me this as we drove through the fields, as we kept driving, as the car hurtled us forward, you whispered to me that you would be special if things were wrong with you; that you might feel whole if the sepsis  leaked into your bones.

i thought this was what you wanted, when you told me that your muscles had dried and shriveled and you were stuck stuck stuck,

you want to feel special.

you want to feel as special as you can, you want the looks and the oglers and the way that people stare into you and through you as if you are a window

but you want to be pretty, you screamed at me do i look pretty do i look pretty do i look pretty do i look pretty is there anything about me that looks pretty

and the tears gliding down your face through your shirt glistened like dew: you’re beautiful i told you.

but you want to feel special, and god who isn’t pretty now-a-days? 

you want to be special so you hide inside the corners of sauces and soups trying to wrangle the bones flavoring the sauce, i’m rebuilding from the ground up, your muscles groan and convulse and you try to turn from side to side

you become the wooden spoon stirring my pot

you pick at the parts that drift by and snatch them one by one: carrot, turnip, bone, bone, bone, string of fat seeping to the surface, foam beginning to gurgle, bone, bone,

you leave dozens of carcasses at my feet, mostly immobile, any slight imperfection and i hear you crying from the bathroom why can’t i be pretty?

do i look pretty? do i look pretty? you want to leave this cycle but there is only one type of special you can see the world seeing you in and you want to run from it. you want to conjure the image of the most special person in the whole world, you want to become jesus without the stunts, you don’t need to walk on water because everyone knows you are special.

so you wait in the soups and sauces and you collect more: heads of turnips and carrots and radishes and you connect these to the bones that pile up, the cartilage only half dissolved, you call out of work again if i’m being honest you might not even work there anymore.

you spend your days stapling together the bones and the turnips and the fat. you spend your days trying to build the new you. you spend your days almost succeeding, almost breathing, almost allowing your body to rise, but as your new body begins to stand you always find something wrong with you. you never feel special.

you tell me that jobs don't matter because once you are so so so pretty the world will open up and you’ll burn that place to the ground and everyone there will burn and die and then you can start on your children. your crispy children losing scales of skins. your wonderful children waiting for you to craft them, to give them life.

you tell me that once you finish your new body, once you find the right chicken carcass to hold your turnip head, you will have the spare time to pick the crisp skin off the people you’ve burnt down and then you will have the time to separate muscle from bone and charred remains from teeth and then you will have the time to create more pretty pretty people

(just not quite as pretty as you)

do i look pretty? do i look too young to be a mother? do you think they look like my sisters? if i was outside of the store, do i look young enough people may think i’m stealing them?

your smile is never like anyone. i tell you again and again that your smile is so so special, so so beautiful and hand crafted, so so pretty. every time i say this you hide your face