raw by Heaven Collins
walking into the grocer
all i see is red. it stains the meat
department, the produce, the
paper products aisle. there is
red surrounding me. i’m becoming
suffocated.
when we go home, everything is
still red. my mom slices eight pounds
of ground beef into portions for
our meals. she always calls it hamburger.
all i can see is the red juice collecting at the
bottom of the white styrofoam.
it looks
like blood but my mom promises me it
isn’t. she’s promised me that since i
was a little girl.
my dad will slap three new york strip, bone
in steaks on the grill later that night. it’s forty
degrees out and he grills them for an hour
until the bone is near charred and no
blood is visible in the flesh.
i feed the
fat to my dog
if i go without red meat for more than a
week my head will pound, my brain knocking
against my skull begging to be fed more
blood because something about my body needs it.
i used to torture the need by being a vegetarian until
i found myself eating only a thousand calories a day. junk food
vegetarian.
the first time i bit into a burger again i wished i just
ate it raw.
letting the juices drip down my mouth
as if i was a vampire, cutting through the fat of
a steak, feeling how it squishes between
my teeth. i need to satiate my hunger
but i’m just so tired of seeing red.
june 22nd, 2020Heaven Collins is a future Academy Award winning screenwriter, at least in her wildest dreams. She's currently finishing up her senior year at Champlain College, where she spent the last four years pouring her soul out via her laptop keyboard and Google Documents. Her previous publications include Genre: Urban Arts issues 4, 5, 6, and 8.