The Pantry

By Diana (@allweareisbulllets)

Once, I hid a brown bear cub in the cereal cabinet. It showed up at my door and begged for a place to stay and I cradled it to sleep every night. When it died it fossilized like shame, which I also keep in the cereal cabinet– if it is not locked around me like a chastity belt. The second cub found its way to me and I fed it nuts and grains and let it sleep in my bed. When he made too much noise, my father kicked him out. I remember his face through the windowpane. It said: I would have been so good, if only you let me. I would have been quiet and I would have behaved and I would have kept you alive forever. 

The milk only becomes butter when it has been churned thick and left to ferment, when it has been worn out. Things are most interesting when they begin to decay. 

I want to live without my talons. I want to be rid of the sharpness of my voice. I want nothing but to grasp the persimmons without breaking their skin. I pray for gentleness and kindness and warmth. 

Words feel like pure white sugar with their bothersome rough grain and crisp, clean sweetness. 

There are bananas and kiwis and apples in a bowl on the counter. 

I want nothing but to roll up like a pill bug, or tighten like a fist, until time feels compressed and until the hands in my mind can leisurely flick through the pages of my life's photobook. I am trying to forget something too important to remember. Ultimately, I am weak. 

My father squeezes garden-fresh strawberries in his hand until they turn into sweet jam but my mother always dices them first. I wish we had peanut butter, but if I really want it I have to buy it myself, and my dad is not the type to buy any. I could ask him why but I have before and he is not the type to repeat sentences, either. Sometimes I wish he was. But there is only so much a person can change about themself before they are not themself anymore. Remember, not everyone is as fluid as you. 

A small wad of butter is sliding lazily across the hot pan until it is destroyed by a circular smear of thick pancake batter. Barefoot in the kitchen, I watch it slowly begin to bubble. The sound of breakfast sizzling softly is layered under the sound of me speaking. 

My friend, hovering over me, has a slice of cheese in her hands. With her white-painted fingernails she is ripping it into smaller slices and placing them in her mouth. I am telling her my thoughts about love and sex and she mumbles “Diana, you’re never gonna get a good high, or get fucked well or know what anything is like,” 

“You’re going to marry a man that doesn’t know your name,” 

“I’m not going to marry,” 

I flip over a pancake.

The part of me that can consume until it is ill but never enough to be fulfilled is kept in the cereal cabinet too. Maybe some parts of the kitchen are like cavities. Maybe their existence is making the whole house ache. 

Time is dull and hollow and soft in the face. The sound of seconds ticking on the clock hides beneath the sizzling and the chatting and the hum of the fridge. The pill bug releases tension, as if the holder of the fist clenched with rage was met with a delicate kiss on the jaw. 

When you lay sideways, your spine is the horizon. All the arms in the world can never reach you. I will be the first. 

In the hospital waiting room, the patient satisfaction survey makes me cry. 

What becomes of the patient who has been healed? What if the flesh believed itself to be born sick? If you are cured now, do you still feel like yourself? There is only so much a person can change about themself before they are not themself anymore. 

Is it about what happened during the appointment, or what change was triggered within you? Who you left as? 

Are you aware none can scratch your back as well as you can scratch it yourself? If so, why did you decide to pay us a visit? 

I flip over another pancake. The third cub is at my door. I know how this will end, but I take him in anyway.

Diana is a writer drawn to the pretty, the eerie, the poetic, and the unseen. She moves through the world like a question half-answered, always searching, always inspecting, always feeling.