SELF PORTRAIT AS BLACK HOLE
by Maeve Holler
I suck it all up. With death as occupation, I take it all in like the pleasure of the earth is my feast: the
menthol breath of October, the cowardly smile of your dog, textures of kaleidoscope rhinestones,
and the devil’s sunbeams raining thick in New Orleans fog. The glittering heartbeat of breathing—I
go in on this love. I glutton like the gravity trap I am. I eat the chiffon fuchsia curtains, your
mother’s wedding dress, the deep green salt of ocean honey & orgasm bliss. I ravage in grass stains,
in sleep, in palm leaves. In the haunting stillness of firsts. In the stumble of sangria night. You
could call it dumb consumption, but I devour the pornography of it all. I’m a hypothetical star, a
depression, sapping your spacetime, your tastebuds, the hue of your sky. Even radiation can’t
escape me. Are you wondering where I put it all? It’s all stored inside of me, dormant & twisted
until the lavender day when it will be birthed again. Then, maybe the light will be a better version of
itself. Maybe it will be less shimmer and more unwashed. More persistent. More graphic. The
mutilated little lovechild of my body’s depression. Nurtured full-term and finally spit out.