#i could talk about my vision for this poem for so long but aarghjghgghdn.

[fearandhatred]

ok so what if the reason crowley likes watching aziraphale eat is because nothing he does for himself can give him back the pleasure he felt when creating his stars, so the next closest feeling to that is through experiencing someone else's greatest pleasures. but it will never be enough

text below the cut

hunger is a funny thing; multifaceted, duplicitous there's a hunger to give and a hunger to take the hunger of passion and the hunger of greed

i knew only of the first type of hunger, before time, before sorrow back when there was just the explosions of supernovas, the heat of the cosmos, the planets in my grasp and the world at my feet back when i was the barycenter of the universe and all my steps created consecrated ground the souls at my tabernacled fingertips, helpless, hopeless, defenceless the power to do whatever i wanted to them and choosing only kindness

that was before i knew how it feels to have it all stripped away to go from being larger than life to living in it; from creating to the realisation of having been created, at the mercy of things of my own design to be helpless, hopeless, defenceless, in a world that was never kind to me

that was before i knew the agony of hunger pangs, bone deep and spiritual that carved out my marrows, left me substanceless and corrosive everywhere and nowhere, that nothing i did could satiate that nothing can satiate but grace

there's a hunger to give and a hunger to take and the damned have nothing left to give

but you do.

you take and you take and you take, never left wanting a taking borne not from desperate emptiness, for once, but one of indulgence you gorge yourself with selfish pleasure, glut yourself with food unneeded fulfilment, hunger stacked upon already-there satisfaction and in taking, so also do you give

with each fistful you grabbed of that ox rib i could imagine snatching my stars out of the sky pressing them down between my palms, permanent claiming marks seared into my hands i imagined swallowing them down, eruptions of light and neutrons on my tongue with each sip you take of wine i imagine myself sucking in the universe galaxies and planets orbiting in my stomach, the centre of the world's gravity i imagine breathing in liquid life, the warmth of existence stinging my throat

and for the first time, my hunger is sated by watching you sate yours for now, it's enough for me to just watch

so establish this covenant with me: take your fill of animals, of drink, of everything within reach stuff your heart full, consume the world raw, and i'll do the same with my eyes but after that, tear the flesh off my frame, gnaw on my hollow bones strip me of the little i'm still worth, leave me bare and stranded feast on my body, broken for you do this in remembrance of me, and maybe i'll do the same

because that hunger of creation i can never get back, no matter how much i try so now i just gorge myself on you