Silence gnaws as my limbs begin their wilt, cold and impersonal in its suffocating familiarity.
I am foolish to have presumed myself above the deep-seated nature of loneliness; to think it would have ever truly departed from the small, defiled animal inside of me.
There are flaws beneath my skin that are the only permanence I will ever live to witness. Everything I touch retreats wounded; my attachment is corrosive, untameable, canine.
Mourning is flesh-like, bitter and heavy between my jaws, staining the glistening brutality that choked its fate to a swinging limp.
The hunter does not pity his meal, his means to survive-
but I am my own, a mutilated failure, and can only blame the instinct that drove my bite for the result I crane my gaze away from. I am repulsed by my own persisting hunger, and even more by my inability to deny myself.
I can wallow in self-inflicted misery, but the truth drips from my chin, crimson-warm, visceral and unforgiving.

My shame has never saved me.