Nothing Left to Give

Hey Rene'! I finally figured out how to retrieve my password and stuff from this site.  So, now I can be apart of it!

 Anyway, I love the opening image of maggots.  It's skin-crawling. Overall, I would try to shorten some lines because some words aren't necessary. Also, in my changes, I tried to connect the maggots to the leeches, as though, through injecting yourself with some infection, you killed off the maggots, but somehow they came back, this time in the form of leeches... still sucking you dry of something... so, it's like, you can't get rid of them -- and even more chilling, you welcome them, in hopes that one day, when you are left empty, they will have nothing to feed on, and you will be free.

Here are my changes:

They show up

    like maggots to a feast,

    maybe they came to eat

    the rotting pity

    that falls from my frame.

Creeping, crawling up from behind

they are sneaking up

on me (I see them from the

corners of my eyes) trying  (changed this word for sound)

to catch me unaware.  For what,

I don't know.  Let them feed on me.  (This SHOWS you don't give a damn)

I've injected myself with infections

just to watch them fall like dominos.

Still, they are drawn,

through some magnetic force,

to this frame,

Back to attack as leeches, this time,

sucking the life from my veins.

I bleed into them all of me,

hoping

when I am bled dry

emotionally

financially

physically

entirely,

maybe then,

I'll be empty

and free.

I love you

--Manda

Hello,

Josie here.  Hope it's OK if I post a comment since I'm not really familiar with your work, but I loved this.  It is very close to the bone, honest to the point of a kind of beautiful cruelty in that anyone who truly takes it in and tries to understand this state of mind/heart/body you are describing will find themselves responding from the same place in them.  It takes a lot of courage to write what you've written.  Bravo!