You can feel your heart in my mouth. It claws up your throat, trying to get out, trying to bare itself to you, trying to tell you what it needs.
[[Push it back.]]
You push your fingers into your mouth, but as you reach your palm, your hand won't go in any further, your fingers feel stuck, teeth digging into your hand, not letting go. You can feel the beat of your heart against your fingertips, blood spurting from the gashes its claws leave on your fingers. You can feel it trembling, it's afraid. It's hard to connect it to yourself.
[[You treat your heart as other.]]
As you begin to dissasociate your heart with yourself, it becomes easier to force your fingers deeper into your mouth, as your fingers scrape against your tongue, teeth digging into your skin, pulling. You try and force your jaw open futher.
Something pops, and it gets easier, your jaw hangs loose, you can fit your whole hand into your mouth. You ball your hand into a fist, and [[push against your heart.]]
The heart pushes back against you, but you try and force it down anyways. It goes easy, pushing down your throat, you can taste copper on your tongue, lolling against your arm, feeling the hairs as you shove deeper, now in up to your elbow, heart almost back in it's place. [[It would only take a little more.]]
It hurts a little, but your shoulder pops out of its socket easily enough. You can push your whole arm into your mouth now, using your other arm.
There's a thrill to this, you begin to realize. Something about this pain is relieving, something about pushing into your body, removing it's control over you, asserting yourself, even as your body screams out for you to stop. You don't have to listen to it, you can [[push through.]]
With one final thrust, and a little whimper, your heart is back where it belongs, claws sunk into your lungs, holding itself in place. It beats hard, making up for lost time. You examine yourself, looking into the mirror.
You stand in front of someone, their entire arm shoved down their throat, jaw unhinged, muffled whimpers eminate through your arm. They sound like weakness, but they don't feel like they come from yourself.
It's so hard to associate this image with yourself [[you can't help]] but laugh.
The sound comes out muffled and dull against your flesh. Something about that, in itself, is hilarious. You feel entirely encapable, but at the same time, a wonderful sense of empowerment washes through your body, like tide.
Is this what you are? Something that cannot help itself, but by harm? A creature that exists only to destroy itself, and in that act, finds its purpose?
You wish you knew how to answer that in a way that felt satisfying. You try and pull your arm out, but it's caught, somewhere in your throat, you can feel it against your teeth. Every time you try and pull back out, your teeth won't let you. Your mouth is designed for taking things in, not letting them out, after all.
[[Perhaps consuming yourself was what your heart was asking for the entire time.]]
As the thought crosses your mind, you feel your heart start to slow, suddenly contented. It's easy now that you know the trick, pulling bones apart, tearing muscle as your stare at yourself in the mirror. Something about this contortion is arousing, you wish you could be naked, watching yourself be consumed, becoming the ouroboros. You take a moment to feel down to your crotch, eyes closed, hair caught between your teeth, stomach acid lapping your fingers, and it [[feels good.]]
You push deeper and deeper, the cloth of your shirt rough on the roof of your mouth, tasting of salt from the sweat dripping from every part of your body. It tastes like sex, it tastes like people, like connection. The smell is what you can't get over.
That stench of sweat, your body is covered in it, making you slick, damp, pooling in your underwear, you can feel it gliding along your body, it itches. You run your free hand over yourself, in past your shoulder now, jaw painfully agape, even as you move beyond pain.
Your nerves are aflame and you can't tell what's pleasure and what's pain any more.
[[Perhaps you never could.]]
It seems so obvious now that feeling is far less binary than you ever thought before. You can feel everything, right now, the dissolving of your flesh, your teeth, pressing hard through the fabric, and into your skin, tearing, making bruises, that hopefully won't stick around for you to feel them tomorrow.
For, something about this moment feels fleeting. If you stop now, you won't continue. This is a task that will never be fulfilled.
Maybe that's alright.