I'm trapped in a phone booth with my last quarter. I want to dial your number, but I know our conversations are plagued by malicious words. I'm saturated by the New York rain. The quarter sticks to my hands like oil on a mechanic's palms. I drown in a haze of my own apprehension, as cars honk their horns the stench of turpentine clogs my nostrils and smog rises over the stacks of New York's glazed skies. I never forget about times you've cried over the other line (she's never seen me break down). I'll keep my head low and let the quarter slip through my fingers.
Is Eating Your Shadow Cannibalism?
This blackened-figure follows me everywhere, it reminds me of someone? I wish I could douse it in gasoline and set it on fire. It's always lurking, like an ex-girlfriend standing outside your home, staring at your window, waiting to pounce on any passing feminine-shape.
It's my misshapen, ebonized-mirror clinging to surrounding walls, plastering itself onto sidewalks, streets, trees and ceilings. It's my eyeless, pallid-parrot, mimicking all of my actions, but never speaks. It'll stick a needle into its arm when I do. It'll simultaneously masturbate with me; an unidentifiable voyeur behind me, pleasuring itself to my convulsing, lanky body.
I call the cops and report my "stalker." When they search my apartment, it disappears. They leave, I close my door and it's rubbing itself against my refrigerator.
Maybe I can eat it? It reminds me of someone, but I can never tell who? If I ate my shadow, would I be a cannibal?
Bio: Steven Allan Porter was born February 5, 1992 in Coral Springs, FL to a Jewish mother and a German father. His influences include: Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Steven Jesse Bernstein, Anne Sexton, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bob Kaufman. He currently resides in Henderson, NV.