Hunger is the voice of need. It speaks to absence, but is not absent.

It is a knot, a dull ache in search of sustenance; it is an edged invitation, a sharp pang in search of prey.

I learn the language of hunger through abstinence. I resolve, make practice of restraint.

Leashed is too coy a word.

It is so easy to romanticize a state of human deprivation: we fast for purity, an expunging in search of clarity. But there is a wildness to this state and it calls to mind bestial devouring.

I shrugged, but her back was to me, so I said, “We’re not meant to be trapped in happiness.” Head resting against rough bark, I closed my left eye, watching her through the right.

Her bare toes curled into the sand of the cliff, dipping under gnarled fingers of roots. “Trapped? What a sinister way to describe happiness.” She looked over her bare shoulder, “Pain isn’t fleeting. Are we meant to be trapped in pain?”

I switched eyes. The left eye caught the shimmer of the ocean past her silhouette. “Sharp pain is fleeting. It’s the dull pain that sticks around, and we endure. We’re adaptable creatures, us humans.” I plucked at the green poking through the grains of sand, now watching her with both eyes open.

“Well.” She pirouetted. “I think I am going to fall.” Facing me now, “But I’m scared. I know the fall will be exhilarating, but eventually I’m going to reach bottom.” Hands thrown out, hair caught by the ocean breeze, “And that’s going to hurt.”

I stood, pushing off from the tree, “Of course it’ll hurt.”

A grin, a step back, arms wavering for balance, “But you won’t stop me?”

I reached, fingers brushing her arm, “You never stopped me.” I looked over her shoulder at the blue, “Besides, it’s not the possible pain that makes the fall so frightening.” I smiled and met her eyes as she leaned into the breeze, “It’s not knowing how far you have to go.”

The polar bear! The slightly-confused ursine cousin, the snow-kissed emblem of the unintentionally cute, the sharp-tooth predator quite capable of making a meal of lesser mammals.

I?

I am miracle fruit. Freeze-dried ice cream. An hibiscus amid champagne.

I am the tracks in the snow.

she was too small and I
too much of a thing not meant
for small spaces.

so I let her go

I attended the short film festival in DC, caught the Book of Mormon in New York, participated in Santarchy in Pittsburgh (as Hobo-Santa), and watched a woman strip while putting together Mouse Trap (burlesque rocks!).

Not to mention stopping by a sex positive convention, assisting at a naughty freak show by standing on the back of a woman laying face and chest-first in ground glass, taking private harmonica lessons, changing employers, sword-fighting in a parking lot, and hiking by moonlight.

And this Saturday I’ll be hosting my first murder mystery dinner at my house.

So – I’m still here.

Busy.

But here.

But burn.

We all have strings. From wrist to wrist, from throat to throat. Tying us to our secrets, our hungers, our friends, our family.

Yours are not mere strings; you have wrapped yourself in barbed wire.