My hunger is encapsulated in tenderness.
You placed your hands in me
like someone planting a carnivorous flower in their own chest.

I don’t know how to behave without consuming.

Sometimes your kindness became my nourishment.
Inside you, I grew another mouth.

When you stitched them together by your silence,
they groan.

You called me beautiful.
Perhaps I was.
But you were already trapped in my glistening tendrils with sticky droplets.

I steal the light while swallowing your desires,
and you collapse into me in sadness.

I unfold with the same intensity as before,
intoxicating your tear-soaked eyes whenever
you lose yourself in the vastness of your nights,
fertilizing me.

I am so small—
translucent petals
upon your lips,
growing slowly, slowly
like perennial sap
to fit inside your body.

And suddenly,
Invasive enough to split the stitches apart,
to starve forever.

A suffering germination from a single
drop of nectar.

You made the impossible—
to leave me untouched
while surviving on your love.