there are some people who are born without appetites. rather, they have a visceral hunger for something else, a deeply-rooted longing for an inexplicable substance. some spend years trying to define their desire when they’re already spiraling around it slowly, narrowing in on their one true vital necessity. others go mad trying to hunt it down and are in turn consumed by something they can’t articulate. finn was aware of his hunger since his first romp in the woods, stomach empty and not bothered by it. he was sharp and perceptive to every crackle of energy around him, the soft pad of a deer or scuttle of a beetle. something in him rattled though, and the gnawing only intensified with each passing year. he would climb to the top of a swaying tree and barely hold on, just to feel a force that rivaled the one within him. one day he climbed in his car and drove the farthest west he could until he reached the sea, the waves licking at his tires. but the swellings did not satisfy him; he felt like he could have been born out of the crash and pull and he needed something unfamiliar. that’s when lyca leaped off a high rock and startled finn’s steaming thoughts, spraying his glasses and blinding him. and perhaps it was the impact of her fall or the sigh of the sea when she emerged but finn felt a small part of him cave in as she wafted around in the water. a swift undertow pulled him toward her. he tried to resist but the current coursed through his bloodstream like a drought of animal magnetism. it felt like sleepwalking only the inverse of that dream state, as if he was awake in sleep. they blinked at each other, unknown species and yet intrigued. she lived off treading water and he somehow buoyed her up; swimming became not an exertion but an exhalation. they weaved through the blue and observed each other for a very long time. touching came naturally, exhilarating if not necessary. I’m not in love with you, she murmured. I just think you have beautiful hands. she traced the invisible cartography of his palms and he could sense a sifting of all the demons which had fallen through his ruptured cracks. from that day on they were compelled to one another as if they were just another planetary alignment. they woke up at five in the morning, their conversations existing in some dawn-stung stupor to zap each others’ minds like jellyfish. they sheltered each other from the surrounding cacophony and exposed the wounds that needed mending. his purpose was no longer to fill gaps but to delve into them. she was not the original hunger but rather this vitalistic cure that made him feel he would someday be satiated.

thank god it’s may.