# Ouroboros ***—Starling Alder*** *2025* You find your cock twitch at the sight of her pale body. Those collarbones, protruding, upon which the tiny droplets of sauce—red, violet, green, and an ungodly bright yellow—are spaced in perfectly even distance apart. The small, pointy breasts, nipples a shade of pink as if no man's lips have touched them before—in fact, you were assured that such was the case, as the body that would deserve to be served with a meal like this could only be from a virgin—and the belly button, so perfectly round, so deep, that you want to get lost in it. But then you see her mound, perfectly bare of course, and something rises in you that makes you want to cry. The perfection of that, of getting to witness a gate that has never opened to anyone but you. Her knees are sharp, which aren't ideal, but no matter, because her ankles are somehow almost non-existent, and her toes are small and her heels are round as if there is no way they can keep her balanced on this earth. The first dish arrives. A tiny squishy dome made of vegetable broth and gelatin and a hint of pink from beets is placed right inside the deep hollow at the base of her neck. Her breathing is so slow, so even, her chest barely moves, but it does. You see it. You feel it. You hear it. You lean in. You cannot quite see the colors of her eyes, or her face for the matter. Not because of a lack of light—the light system is expensive in here, aimed to highlight the texture and color of every dish as you enjoy it—but you aren't really able to notice anything above her neck, because there's no food up there. The art is here, and you lean in, placing your lips just gently against the jelly-like texture of the dome, feeling as if you are about to enter it. You suck the dome into your mouth in one movement, your lips almost touching her skin, and for that split second, you could almost hear her making the tiniest of gasp. But she has been taught, very carefully, not to interfere with your experience. The dome slides down your throat—no chewing needed, or possible—and suddenly you remember that summer back when you were five, playing in the woods behind your grandma's house, smelling grass, smelling trees, smelling a world that was free of any of the things that would come after that summer, after that year, after that life. The second dish: sixteen pieces of various oddly shapes each the size of a fingertip, put together into the shape of a human heart, placed directly between her breasts. You are told that the chef has cooked animal hearts in a vegetable and bone broth that simmers for hours, then filter that several times until the end result is a clear liquid, almost like water, which is then mixed with a kind of concoction made from finely grounded bones and just a touch of milk to let the gel be moldable into these pieces. You can eat them by themselves, or dip them into the sauce drops along her collarbones. You try one piece that you pluck right out of the middle of the heart-shaped presentation without the sauces. The taste doesn't hit you at first. Then the slight metallic tang reminds you of that year when Mom said she could no longer stay because your Dad was a piece of excrement, because her love for you was not enough for her to stick it out, because he would take care of you even though he could never take care of her. You held on so tightly to her leg while she was trying to get out the door, you fell onto the threshold, almost splitting your lips on that metal divider. The taste of metal. The taste of leaving. You sit back, desperate for a sip of water. But no water is served. It's common knowledge that during police interrogations, the suspect is deprived of water so that the primal urge of the body would push them towards confessing. That if they are given a sip of water, they might swallow that confession right back down. No water is served until the chef says so. The third dish comes, two lumps of white powder of slightly different textures—one super fine, one more grainy—that get poured perfectly around her nipples, covering them and the aureolae completely. Apparently it's a kind of sugar-salt concoction with sugar made from distilling organic daikon radishes for days, and salt from a secret mine in a remote area with water as clear as the sky on a summer day, then the two get smoked together with wood harvested from an old-growth forest. Legal? Not sure. You don't care. You pull yourself back, take a feel deep breath, then lean in and take a gentle lick on the right breast. The smooth powdery texture seems to disappear immediately under your tongue. Sweet, salty, smoky. You go in again, this time with your tongue pressing harder onto the powder, onto her nipple, then around it, until you've licked it all clean. The nipple seems a bit darker now, but perhaps it's just the angle of the light. You go to the left breast, where the more grainy powder rests on the peak, and you suck on it, the whole nipple, then the whole pointy breast, into your mouth, letting your tongue swirl around it, your teeth graze by it, and you bite, just slightly. Her nipple gets hard, but she remains still. You feel the grains of salt and sugar and smoke in your mouth, and *where was that, oh, yes, it was the fucking back of the office building, her skirt lifted all the way up, you behind her, her moaning your name, telling you she loved you, over and over, snow gently falling, it was cold as fuck but neither of you cared because love made you do stupid things in stupid places at stupid times, and when you came, she told you she loved you again, with tears in her eyes, and sweat trickling down her back and your back, and you kissed her and said those words back even though you weren't even sure you fully meant it, but it seemed like the kind of thing you should say after having shot a load into someone*. You don't know if you can go on. Something about every course has been an experience, expensive, exclusive, exquisite. But also painful. Every taste is a death of the moment, taking you back to places you no longer believe exist, and yet here they are, right on the tip of your tongue. The next dish arrives. A femur bone, resting from between her breasts down to her navel. You feel nauseous, then you look more closely. It's still way too close to the real thing, not that you've ever actually seen the real thing. Then, a small hammer on a kintsugi plate, the gold streaks almost sparkling against the dark navy ceramic. You are invited to crack open the bone, that is of course made of edible sugar, to reveal the "marrow" inside, which is a ghastly red from amaranth leaves mixed with a seventy-two-hour steep alongside other vegetables, then chilled before injected into the bone mold. The marrow splashes all over her, filling up her belly button, from which you drink. You realize how absurd it is to have a blood-like liquid coming out of a broken bone; even for metaphors, that doesn't quite work. *You remember when you broke your leg in half, when you looked at the wrangled mess that were the things holding you up in gravity, how Mom was not there, how Dad was not there, how you were surrounded by strangers who looked both horrified and concerned at the unnatural way your legs turned. A stranger took you to the nearest hospital. He asked you where your parents were, and you couldn't answer. Not because you didn't know, but you couldn't answer the question the stranger was truly asking.* You stumble backwards. "I need to leave." A voice. The host? The chef? "Not until you've finished your last course." You feel tears running down your face. "I'm full." The voice. "You are famished. This is your meal. You are going to finish it." Then the last course arrives. A bottle. Long. Dark. You cannot see what's inside it. The host opens it and pours it directly onto her mound. The liquid—you do not have a name of its color. It looks familiar, it feels familiar, it smells familiar, but you do not have a name for this viscosity. The liquid keeps pouring as if the bottle is bottomless. "Drink it." The voice commands. And you lean in, tears on your face, placing your mouth right at the body's gate, drinking it in. The moment it touches your lips, you *remember.* Not the name, but the *occasion*. You look up, and for the first time since this meal began, you could see clearly the face attached to this body you've been eating on. It is you. It is your face. You as a woman. The woman. You where you came from. No. Not *came.* You are *coming from* this. And suddenly the liquid envelops you and you almost drown in *air* and you gasp and gasp and you bite and you grip and you chew and you try to cry out but no sound would come and no light would reach you and you tear apart the soft flesh that is clenching around you and pushing you out and ... your first cry into the world. A piercing scream. The voice. The voice. Air, that is no longer liquid, that you cannot *fathom*— You've eaten your way out of your woman body. And now, you are here, in the world.