The Wolf You Feed

Boston Christmas blinded. Broadway lay blackened beneath an inferno of crimson and gold light. We lingered by the beaming displays, then we rushed with merry urgency between them.

The tradition began earlier at the local A Christmas Carol. It would soon end, when we couldn’t stomach any more of each other. You said something so I said something. Didn’t matter what. I kept the noise up, the lies sweet, the rhythm stable. Pointless deception. We held ancient knowledge of each other. We could have guessed each other’s stories. New girlfriends masked old tastes. New smiles masked old aches.

Neither of us went to bed hungry anymore. I saw the new laptop beneath the laundry in the backseat of your car. You saw the flash of my wallet as I paid for our chicken tikka masala.

We were raised to think the same. We said we had nothing like everybody said they had nothing. Nobody knew, but everybody could tell.

The meal was as criminal to consume as it was to create. Poor bird blackened to the bone, hacked to chunks, buried under cheap rice, drowned in sauce. But which betrayal occurred first? And what terrible deed finally ended it all? We had long since buried anyone who would have noticed across our family dinner table. Nobody left to tell how the sum of my sins compared to the sum of yours, it was a meal without conclusion.

We were laughing loud, maybe too loud based on how the paper plates sweated and trembled. After every bite, our mouths slid back down into practiced, festive grins, warmed by the sleepy palette of pinks and reds, aglow with teeth.

I had not eaten all day. Not that you knew. My stomach knew how to go without, how to grin in the dark.

Who started as the stomach? Maybe we shared rent on a stomach once, and now it was still out there somewhere, murderous and mute, or maybe we were both the stomach once, only separated now after we chewed ourselves out. Who was to blame? Who did what first? Who had to apologize? Didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered. Just you and me. Watching. Waiting. Wanting. Judging by the shift in your voice, soon laughing. Teeth gleaming, tongues dancing, hunger unblinking.

We skipped arm-in-arm to your car, and I wondered what lay beneath that festive grin. When your lover pressed rose-petals to your ears and told you she loved you, did you speak truth, whispering back that you loved her too? Could such questions slip into the lonely depths of your heart? Were those depths lonely, or just alone? Was I looking at myself, or a hungry wolf wearing my regrets as easily as my smile? Did the answers matter? They didn’t, but we laughed about them still. Ghastly grins devoid of heart, fangs flashing, serpent tongues searching, desperate hunger reaching for anything beyond.