it begins with an animal swallowing another animal: a bird encased in the skull of a bovine, a bovine in the belly of a whale. we are made up of roundness. one day the sun will explode in on itself and the whale will die never having been eaten. have you considered this? there is no mouth wide enough to swallow the big fish. it is like you: undevourable, grating your teeth against a whole block of tofu in the name of love. in your chest is a cicada. i know this. i’ve held the cicada between my pinched fingertips. soft and nervous, all desirous and desired. and if anyone could swallow the whale, it would be you because you, animal, are goodness. you ask me, does the whale want to be eaten? how could it want something which it has never felt? my fingers are hooked inside your jaw, jerking it open and begging for mastication. for my hand to trickle down your throat. you like the taste of my fingers and our bodies agitating in dewy sickness. i didn’t know wetness could feel so feverish. cut along the stomach and we will never be sure which one of us is about to spill out. yet i do know this: you are not a trout. you are the very roundness in my palm. you are the mouth big enough to swallow the whale. tell me how this isn’t careful devotion.