[CREATIVE NONFICTION] The Softest Kind of Burning
A few minutes after the appetizer comes out, you are in the bathroom, shoving your fingers down your throat. When it’s over, you scald your mouth clean, steam rising onto the mirror.
Faintly, you can hear friends laughing when you sit back down at the table. But all you see are the fresh wings sitting in front of you, calling you to commit the worst atrocity possible: Eating them.
You do.
Maybe it is because you’re sick, but just before you step into the stall again, your head whirls to glance back. And it is here, in this blur, where your eyes find the mirror, still fogged over with its promise of vanishing. You lock the stall. Your fingers dig into the soft decay of your esophagus and burning excess spills into the toilet again. Steam still rises out of the sink like a ghost.
Daniel Garcia is a poet and writer based out in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He is currently pursuing his degree in creative writing and goes to church frequently–and by church he means poetry slams. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Write About Now Poetry, SlamFind, SUGAR Magazine, Rathalla Review, Dragonfly Arts Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, and more. When he isn’t writing or slamming, Daniel can be found giving as many hugs as possible, living by the words “You are all that you have,” and falling off the edge of the Earth. He is the 2017 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) Head to Head Haiku Slam Champion.