I will sit here, not squirm, while you taste of my body. The knife releases something in me, I think. My existence is driven down to a point of pain and your moans around my flesh. Tomorrow, I will be bandaged, and you will be married. But tonight, I can be yours for the last time, and I can open myself up to you in a way that they never would. When you consume me, I am cursing you to always remember.

I will not wish you well when you will not come back to me. When your stained lips come back up to mine, can you taste over the iron of my blood, the pearl I placed beneath my tongue? Will you notice if I slip it past your lips? Will they be wearing pearls tomorrow when the two of you walk down to the river to exchange your quiet vows? Do they know who made that river gleam for you, who made its banks burst when you first touched me there?

You’re plunging your fingers into my wound and bringing them to my mouth, and the look in your eyes tells me that you hate me as much as I hate you now. I am not backing down from your challenge, I inhale your fingers and lavish them. You’re crying now, you hate how much you like that, I smile around your fingers and pull off of them. The keen you cry when I do must be so vilely embarrassing for you. To know that I know how much you wanted.

• Did you know that the strength of a human’s jaw is such that we could easily bite off our own fingers if we weren’t scared of the pain? I whisper into the shell of your ear, and the only way I can tell you heard is that you begin to tremble. I know I have you.

You’re shaking as you dip your fingers, three this time, into my blood again. When you bring them to my lips, I smile with my teeth before bearing down on them, making sure to scrape at your skin with my canines as I mouth around your fingers. I’m laughing, you’re shuddering, trying not to come like this, you don’t want to come like this the night before your wedding, but it’s happening anyway, you’re on the verge

I bite your ring finger off, and you howl. And then I’m kissing you, using your own finger like a tongue, exploring all the nooks and crannies with the scrape of your ex-fingernail. When the tears run down your face, I spit it out onto the table for later. I cradle your face in my hands, wipe your soaked cheeks with my thumbs. I’m kissing you gently now, the way you like to be let down after that high. My spit is full of your blood, yours is full of mine. They mingle together, between us, and the sourness brings my tears too.

Tomorrow, your spouse will go to put the ring on your finger and falter. Tomorrow, the river will burst forth and drown you. Tomorrow, I will wake up feverish, in pain, alone, and when I look at your finger on the table, I will see your whole hand there instead, a hand attached to an arm, attached to a torso, attached to your empty head and heart.

Tomorrow, I will bury your finger in the back garden and wait for your bad seed to grow again.


Abigail Denton (she/any) is a very tired queer writer living in Mobile, AL. She encourages you to fight against fascism and settler colonial violence wherever you find it and to practice care for each other. Find her on Instagram @that_living_death, on Twitter @thislivingdeath, or on Bluesky @thislivingdeath.