You're always hungry

In the Midwest, there are diners that pretend to be diners. Elvis on the walls and red vinyl booths, Route 66 tourist charmers. These are sinister creatures, ghosts wearing the made-up skin of their own corpse, and you can feel the chill in the air when you cross the threshold. The true Midwestern diner experience is a tiny little white building with the kitchen exposed, a yellowed backlit changeable letter menu like a drive in theater concession stand. There are no decorations, except maybe a weird mural of Marilyn Monroe on the wall and a vintage Looney Tunes clock. All the workers are yelling and they write with sharpie on the burger wrap and it bleeds through the thin greasy paper onto the bun. You wonder if it is safe to eat, but it’s the best burger you’ll ever have, you’ll drop to your knees in the hot black asphalt parking lot (maybe it’s gravel, and the gravel sticks itself into your skin) and weep with reverent awe. You were probably really hungry. You’re always really hungry when you go to these places. You should start keeping food in the car cooler, you’re always hungry

You’re always hungry, now that you’re alone all day. Nobody around to cook, nobody around to tell you how, nobody around. You’re tired of reading, of sitting on your ass, you get up and water the plants but hell is forever standing out in the wet Missourian August heat and soon your skin is melted, sliding off and right down the road to start its new life as a road-beatin’ hippie-blaster or whatever the fuck. You should probably start keeping a fan out there, you’re always hot

You’re always hot, now that summer is sending out its last soldiers, thick-shouldered and strong. You can’t hear anything over the cicadas. You were always scared of cicada shells. The shell, not the bug. Something about the shape gives you the heebie jeebies. Scared of nothing, big girl, but the shell of the cicada, and they surround you every summer, dead dead skin

Dead dead skin, underneath your fingernails, you don’t bother with any of it anymore. It comes off when you scratch your mosquito bites, and there’s nothing to do with a mosquito bite but scratch it and scratch it and scratch it until it bleeds. There’s nothing else it needs, until it bleeds until it bleeds bleeds bleeds. Slap a bandaid on it, that’s alright

That’s alright, I don’t need it. Paper or text? Please don’t text me. I don’t need it, that’s alright. I’m not used to this, I should be dead ten times over by now. Does the card go this way? Is this enough cash? When do you get off? Pretend I didn’t say that. Pretend I’ve never said anything. Pretend I never was

Pretend I never was here, army green backpack taking the sun’s hard-knuckled punches on my back. The guilt didn’t fit in the back pocket so it nestled itself snug in my pelvic gap. My boots are a half size too big and they slip as I run run and there goes the sock down off the heel and I’m running running and later I’ll look at this blister and scour the bathroom cabinets and realize we’re out of bandaids. Slap a bandaid on it? I’m in the bathroom avoiding my eyes in the mirror

In the mirror in the mirror in the mirror. Don’t do this to me baby. My hair hasn’t been washed in a week. I pretend I’m an orphan, or homeless? Would I be homeless if I was an orphan? I don’t know. I don’t know where I am. I get down on my hands and knees and crawl around the house and scream and cry and speak in tongues and it doesn’t help anything goddamn it doesn’t help anything in this goddamn world goddamn you you goddamn motherfucker do you think this is okay? Do you think this is safe?

Do you think this is safe to eat? You’re always hungry. In the Midwest you can feel the chill when you cross the threshold. Guilt in the hips. No it’s alright, I don’t need it. Pretend I never said anything. Pretend I was never here, in the Midwest, bury me bury me bury me.