THEO WYLDER

Digestif

When I was in twelfth grade a friend told me, “I should definitely be dead by now.”
Dead girls, she said, were her Barbie. She figured she’d be prettier once she was gone.

It was something to do with sex, the idea of being lifeless yet riddled with lust. She
also told me she didn’t want to die. This week, I thought about her while visiting

an art show in Austin (Wonderspaces: 14 extraordinary artworks and a full bar). One of
the exhibits was an air-filled dome made of yellowed Chinese trash bags; you crawled

inside on your hands and knees until you came into the middle, a room with walls
made of takeout bags and grocery store receipts. The murmuring of other visitors

became soft gurgling, and suddenly, you were in a stomach. It struck me as the type
of thing my undead girl would have loved: the breathing of a corpse around you,

the movement of a body that isn’t yours but should be. In my head, I repeated over and
over again every poem I had ever memorized, counted how many mentioned consumption.

I thanked the dome for being decrepit and dirty and, still, a living reverence. I remembered
telling my friend how badly I used to want to devour someone, gorge myself on love

until distance became impossible; remembered myself young and erotic and biting my arm in
the shower, drawing blood, kissing the red skin so hard it left marks. I hope my undead

girl is still a raw necrotic thing. I hope she finds the same comfort that I do in decay.
Most of all, what I remember about twelfth grade is praying to God, the same question

every day. If You wanted me to be good, then why did You make me so goddamn hungry?

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Theo Wylder is a young poet currently living in the American South and thinking incessantly about want. He is a student and spends most of his time writing or studying, but when he’s free, he enjoys a good Stephen King novel.