Brittle

And nothing could ever approach it, that one sensuous gorge. Her teeth met each blackberry blood hungry, rapacious, as the juice filtered through every nerve of her submissive mouth . The pure ecstasy of eating after a week of self-imposed starvation is something like a first kiss. Because yes, you've touched your lips to surface before, but never in this way, never with a hunger so bold. It was as though she was discovering the act of eating anew, tasting tongue to fruit like a stranger first encounters a foreign set of teeth.

Her ribs bellowed with the shock of nourishment. The tree flies hummed in the distance.

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The appeal of the counterintuitive is natural in human beings. We are unique as a species in that most of us want to stand out from the masses, be distinct enough to see in the wave of bones that populate our swarming cities. But very few of us are artful enough to accomplish this without some sort of pain. 

And so, Julia swallowed the empty green pill. Her hands flew automatically to the inside of her forearm, testing if any new fat had accumulated from that last lapse. A hard bone met her fingers, and she remembered how her brother, to scare her, once darkly pronounced that a skeleton was living inside her body. 

It wasn't until now that she believed him.

Reviews

[Sarah Hawkinson]

wow that was so profound and meaningful. I didn't actually understand what it was about till the very end, and that was really somethin'. Your wording is really great, you know how to depict an emotion and let it really hit home with the reader. Great, excellent, moving work!